Techniques of Chaos
by DezoPenguin
Summary: A mysterious jewel theft becomes Alys Brangwin's first case as a Hunter trainee, and leads her and her mentor into the path of a mysterious blue-haired technique user.
1. Chapter 1

The night was like most on the desert planet Motavia, cool and dry, providing respite from the heat that rolled off the dunes and the hard-packed earth. A breeze whistled through the streets of Zema, bringing with it a faint hint of grassy plains and rolling wooded hills, things buried deep in the Parmanians' racial memory, things from their own home planet no one had known in the thousand years since it had been blasted into drifting fragments.

The wind plucked at the long, dark cloak and close-fitting headcloth worn by the side street's sole occupant. Such garb was common among travelers, but the prevailing color was white, to throw back the glare from the burning eye of the sun, Algo. The man's dark cloak, a charcoal-gray like the clothing beneath, suggested that he was up to no good. The dark color would blend easily into the shadowy corners of a town where night-lamps were few and far between, the headcloth made it difficult to see his face even in good light, and the cloak confused the eyes of onlookers by blurring the outlines of his figure, making it hard to accurately describe his build.

The stalker was a pragmatic man and he had learned his lessons well in the art of stealth.

A jingling of metal on metal caught the man's ear, and he shrank back into the shadows at the corner of a house. The sound grew nearer and nearer, until a figure turned the corner and the stalker saw a woman in stiff leather armor wearing a weapon-harness. This latter was what caused the noise, rings and buckles clashing against one another and against the hilts of long daggers. This was a prosperous neighborhood, and patrolling guards were assigned to the area to watch for thieves and troublemakers.

The stalker hoped the patrols were made up of town guards; if the local owners had paid for them, they were getting conned. He could eliminate this one almost effortlessly through several different means. Her sheer ignorance made his fingers itch to do just that.

The stalker let her walk on obliviously, though. Unlike her, he was a professional. That meant refraining from pursuing visceral pleasures while on the job. Even if he concealed the body--which would itself waste time--she would no doubt be missed when she didn't arrive at some rendezvous point or back off shift, and who knew if that was in five hours or five minutes? No, if he took it upon himself to punish her for her incompetence he would be no better than her.

Once the guard was a sufficient distance away, the cloaked man left the cover of the shadows and slipped on down the street, until he came to an alley between houses. In this affluent area, it was not a narrow passage but a broad lane, giving plenty of space between the walls. The stalker felt open and exposed, and he was glad that his goal was around the back of the house.

The building had a walled-in garden around back, testifying to its owner's wealth. Like the house itself, the wall followed the current fashion in architecture by being studded with crenelations at regular intervals. These made laughably easy supports for ropes and other tricks of entry. Unlike roof-mounted ones, though, the merlons on a fence-top were often deliberately designed to be flimsy and to break off if pressure was applied. Since this was a ten-foot wall, using one for support could lead to a nasty fall, and the crash of breaking stone and brick falling to the street might attract all kinds of attention. There were better ways.

The stalker took a thick baton tipped with a claw hook out from under his cloak. The unusual width of the shaft was soon explained when he shook out the collapsible sections and his eighteen-inch baton became a six-foot poke. A few quick twists of the sections locked them into place. He then reached up, hooked the claw tip over the top of the wall, and began to climb, using his upper-body strength to haul himself up hand-over-hand. Nearing the top, he braced himself with his feet and released the pole with one hand long enough to reach under his cloak and retrieve a thick leather pad that was fastened to the inside back. This pad he flipped over the six-inch depth of the wall's top. Its purpose was to insulate his body from the shards of broken glass, fixed swordlike blades, and other unpleasant surprises that were often used by security-conscious homeowners. Only then did the cloaked man pull himself up the last length and swiftly slither across the wall, bringing the pole with him. He moved as quickly as possible, so that his own weight would not rest on the pad long enough for it to push down on the cutting edges hard enough to slice through.

He landed lightly inside the garden, on soft green grass, and hooked the pad down with the climbing pole. He saw no guards, no dogs in the back yard; the garden had no additional protection besides the wall. No lights shone from the rear windows of the house. The stalker put away the tools of his trade and crossed the garden in light steps, walking only on the grass or the crushed-gravel path to keep from leaving telltale prints in the dirt edges.

Most Motavian windows were narrow, too narrow to admit a person, because they were often left open to draw in fresh air and restricting their size was the only way to discourage thieves. Because the back windows of this house looked out into a closed garden, though, they were much larger, to give panoramic views and let in more light. They were closed by glass panes, but those could be opened while stone walls could not.

The stalker knew the position of the room he wanted and went there at once. Selecting a window, he equipped himself with a titanium-tipped cutter he had obtained in Molcum from a clever Native Motavian. This device not only used the extraordinary metal only the blue-furred native race knew how to refine, but fixed by suction to a central point on the pane and pivoted on a ball joint to cut out a circle of glass without risk of the cut piece falling and shattering loudly. The stalker could not help but smile at his memories of the inventor, who had not cared what purposed his device would be used for, instead solely enjoying the intellectual challenge of fulfilling the cloaked man's request. The cutter worked easily, and the stalker carefully put the cut piece aside. He slipped his hand through the window and turned the lock.

The intruder did not open the window at once, however. Instead, he put his hand through the hole again and felt along the frame until he found the wire. Opening the window would release the tension and trigger an alarm. Simply cutting the wire would have the same effect, only more dramatically.

The cloaked man was prepared for this as well. He unwrapped a small packet of waxed paper and removed a sticky globule of resin, which he pressed against the windowframe. Gently, so as not to send out vibrations and defeat his purpose, he pressed the wire into the resinous gum until he was confident it was held fast. Then, he cut the wire below that point, and when he was secure that his countermeasure was holding and he would not have to beat a hasty retreat, swung open the hinged window.

The room he entered was a kind of trophy hall, where valuable collectibles were displayed. Some were historic pieces while others had intrinsic value due to precious metals or gems, and yet still others were works of art valued for aesthetic reasons. Even a few of the smaller, less valuable pieces slipped into a pocket could make for many weeks of comfortable living. Once again, professionalism stayed the stalker's hand. He was here for a purpose, not to indulge in recreational theft.

He scanned the room and found his target at once, a metal-banded wooden case inlaid with jewels. The contents of the case did not interest the stalker; what he wanted was on the outside. He turned the case and noticed that one of the stones on the back had a faint ruddy glow of its own. Placed at the back it was impossible for a casual visitor to notice.

Now things would get interesting.

He got out a pouch which was lined inside and out with thin strips of metal and set that down next to the case. Next came the gauntlets, thick gloves whose fingers and palms were likewise metal-plated. He hated the clumsy things with a passion but recognized that they were necessary. Lastly he took a thin, pointed metal probe and began to pry the glowing gem free of its setting. At first his efforts were resisted, due in large part to the way the gauntlets inhibited his movement., Eventually, though, he felt the stone come free.

The reaction was instantaneous and explosive. With a thunderous boom, a bolt of searing red light launched itself from somewhere in the room and struck the jewel even as it was still coming free from its setting. The stalker felt the searing heat, and his eyes danced with sparks. The case was badly damaged, but he didn't care; he had what he'd come for.

He dumped the gem into the pouch and sealed it shut, then removed the gauntlets and put them away. The pouch went into a pocket, as did the melted remnant of the probe just in case it could somehow identify him. He knew the noise would wake the sleeping household and that this room would be their first destination, but he also knew that it would take time for the residents to clear their sleep-fogged brains and realize that the explosive sound had come from inside the house and needed investigation. He had to make haste but not be sloppy.

The stalker went back to the window, climbed through it, and closed it once again. The missing glass and cut wire wouldn't pass overlooked by even a casual search, but if the first people on scene had to fetch lamps and then if their attention was initially captured by the results of the firebolt, he might gain a minute or two's time before someone turned their head and noticed the window, whereas if he'd left it open it would not give him even that slender margin. When seconds were priceless, spending three to gain sixty was definitely a bargain well struck.

Crossing the garden again, the stalker saw the blossom of light in more than one window. Luckily it was not a full moon, so that if someone looked outside the intruder wasn't likely to be seen. In the shadow of the wall he took out his climbing pole and the leather pad once more. There were no shouts yet, no hue and cry. He was locking the pole into its extended position, though, when he heard the growl.

_Dog._

No fat, playful mutt to frolic with the children before the fire, this one. Not even a barking watchdog. This was a hundred and twenty pounds of pure fighting beast that went on the attack at once. Someone's first reaction to the explosion of sound had been to loose the animal, reflexively, just in case.

The stalker got the climbing pole up fast in both hands, and as the dog leapt for his throat he caught it under the forelegs to maintain separation and twisted, using the animal's own momentum to fling it aside. It hit the grass and rolled to its feet unhurt, but the maneuver had bought the stalker time.

Some men in his position would have fought the animal with the staff or drawn another lethal weapon. This was not the stalker's way. Beasts had a nasty tendency to fight on even after taking mortal wounds unless actually killed instantly, and he couldn't risk that. He needed something quick and safe. Besides, he respected the owner of this house--a high, bladed wall, alarmed windows, and a dog that was not for show were signs of one who took his security seriously. The animal itself was a creature of lethal efficiency. Only the bungling amateur raised the stalker's disgust and contempt, the desire to crush out.

The cloaked man whipped a tiny blowpipe to his lips and with a puff of breath spat a tiny dart into the animal. The paralytic toxin, distilled from shrieker spores, took effect almost at once.

In another instant the stalker was up and over the wall. Again he stowed the climbing pole and pad, suspicious items to be seen carrying, and slipped away into the night. Even through the metal pouch he could feel the glowing stone burning like a second sun against his chest.


	2. Chapter 2

Bain Standon raised his bow gun and sighted along its length. The weapon was a perfect example of complex technology producing a simple-to-use tool, but it still required a steady hand and a sharp eye to put a bolt on target. Holding his breath to avoid any sudden jerks of his body with the flexing of his diaphragm, he fired.

The bolt slammed into the soft wooden practice dummy, buried several inches into the red dot that marked the humanoid target's heart. Perfect! He lowered the bow gun, grinning, to the sound of applause from two pretty girls, dancers at the Hunter's Guild bar. Unconsciously he found his pose taking on a bit of a swagger, preening before their gaze.

Suddenly, with a whirring of steel, a spinning blade blasted across the throat of the target to the right of Bain's, then swept left to hit Bain's own and the one beyond it. The blade continued its arc, sailing back to the hand of its thrower. The girls gaped, Bain's marksmanship forgotten in the wake of this new feat.

"Blast it, Alys, you're out of position!" Bain protested angrily. "That return throw might have hit someone." Range safety was not Bain's real complaint, of course, but it was the best he could come up with since he could hardly say, _you made me look bad._

Alys Brangwin shrugged and folded the blades of her weapon.

"What can I say? I'm learning the slasher, and the whole point is to hit multiple targets. Besides, you weren't in any more danger than if I'd botched the throw aiming at only my own target and you know it."

He snarled savagely at her in frustration, but couldn't respond because she was right and he still had enough of a hold on his temper to know that he'd just get himself in deeper if he kept arguing with the apprentice hunter, especially when she was just a kid, barely fifteen.

"Ah, heck with it." He flung the bow gun to the dusty ground--it was a practice weapon rather than his own--turned, and stalked off.

Alys grinned and tossed her head. She'd been growing out her brown hair since she'd become a hunter trainee several months ago, and it just brushed her shoulders. She turned and walked back towards the Guild headquarters, and was surprised to see her mentor Galf waiting by the door, big arms folded over his chest.

"I caught your show there, girl."

"I put that strutting showoff in his place."

"Making you what, queen of the braggarts?"

Ouch. Alys realized that she'd been so puffed up with her feat of marksmanship that she'd completely missed Galf's tone of voice in his first sentence and just made it worse for herself.

"So, mind telling me the meaning of that little display?"

"He was posing for those girls, acting like he was the king of the world just because he made a few good shots with a bow gun. I wanted him to know the score, that's all."

Galf didn't say anything.

"Galf?"

"Sorry, didn't want to interrupt before you got to the second half of the story."

"That's all there is."

"Not even the part where Bain did something to you?"

Alys shook her head. She was beginning to get the idea of why Galf wasn't happy with her.

"He didn't do anything, except to put himself up on his usual pedestal."

"Boy's got enough pride for three hunters, no argument. He thinks he's all that and half again. But that's got nothing to do with you. Did he insult you directly?"

"No," Alys admitted.

"You trying to make time with any of those girls he was showing off for?"

"Galf! You know I'm not...I mean, I don't..." She flushed. There were just things she wasn't comfortable discussing with the gray-whiskered hunter! With as much cool as she could manage, Alys said, "I happen to prefer boys, thank you."

"Then what the heck were you doing?"

"He's such an idiot! I couldn't _stand_ it!"

Galf sighed, then gripped her shoulder lightly.

"Time for a life lesson. You're gonna meet a whole lot of people who'll make your hand itch to go upside their head. It's one of the basic truths that people are stupid now and again, and there's a bunch who make a lifestyle out of it. Sooner or later, they're gonna do something that gets them put in their place. They happen to do that something to you, well, that's when you can pitch them in a lake. But you give it to them when they ain't asking for it, then you've sunk to their level. You're playing their game, making someone else look bad to prop up your own rep."

Alys hung her head. Galf was right, of course (darn him for that!). She'd been showing off. Oh, yes, she'd done it because the hunter's adolescent posing was annoying, but it wasn't her place to butt in. And there wasn't even, Alys saw now, the saving grace of having taught Bain a lesson. She hadn't shown him why what he was doing was unprofessional and unworthy of a hunter, the way Galf was showing her. All she'd done was to embarrass him, to stir up bad feelings, and needlessly make herself an enemy.

"Blast it," she said ruefully. "I'm such an idiot."

Galf squeezed her shoulder reassuringly.

"You made a mistake. Life's like that. Now, you've got two choices: are you gonna learn from that mistake, or aren't you? Only way you're an idiot is if you take number two."

"I wasn't even thinking. I just didn't like what I saw and acted. What if I do it again?"

"Then you keep working at it until you get it chiseled into your head." He smiled at her, his teeth white beneath his bushy gray moustache. "You know why most of the combat masters at the Guild spend half their time talking philosophy instead of battle? It's because all conflict works the same, whether you end by talking or by stabbing your enemy. You can't plan strategy in the heat of the moment, so you teach yourself to respond with it by reflex, just like how in hand-to-hand you move by reflex, analyzing the other guy and launching a strike or counter without having to think about it consciously. Trick's to teach your subconscious the _right_ reflexes, 'cause the instincts you're born with are pretty much always dead wrong."

He smoothed his beard with one big hand, which Alys had come to recognize as a sign he was going to change the subject.

"Now, that's enough sage advice for one morning, don't you think? How about I get to what I actually came out here to tell you?"

"There's a special reason?"

"Yep. Been spending too long sitting around here anyway. Probably why you're getting into one-ups with guys who are barely less of a kid than you are. Time we got out into the field again."

Alys's spirit perked up at once.

"What's the job, Galf? A straight-up monster fight, or do we have to track the creature back to its lair and fight it on its home ground?"

"Neither, actually. I figured it was time you were exposed to something a little more cerebral. This is a bounty job, with a human target."

"Target?" Alys's head snapped up, and she couldn't quite keep the edge out of her voice.

"Figure of speech, Alys. The Guild does not do assassinations. This job is an investigation, anyway. We've been hired to look into a theft, solve the crime, and catch the crook."

"That sounds like fun."

"We'll see. It's a lot different than dealing with a monster. Once you put people into the mix, stuff gets a lot more confusing."

"Because they're smarter?"

"Nah. Sometimes they are, but that's not the point. With people you get morality and emotions into the mix. Start dealing with love, greed, hate, and treachery, to say nothing of good and evil, and you can have trouble keeping your head straight."

Alys mulled this over for a moment, then shrugged. She'd find out one way or another.

"So where are we off to?"

"Zema, to the house of a man named Preston Cross."

"Do you know him?"

"I asked around. Minor merchant but has a good slice of agricultural property."

_Agricultural property?_ Alys asked herself. Every so often Galf had the habit of dropping phrases into the conversation that didn't fit with his country-boy speech patterns. Her master was definitely deeper than he let on.

"The key point of information was the fee. Ten thousand meseta if we catch the thief, and an extra five for recovering the stolen property."

"N-i-i-ce," Alys whistled appreciatively. "I guess that just leaves one question: do we start for Zema right away, or wait until tomorrow?"

Galf glanced toward the horizon, where the setting sun was already vanishing behind the mountains.

"In the morning. Always get a good night's sleep before starting out on a job. Odds are it'll be the last decent rest you get until you pocket your commission, and doing serious work when you're wiped out is a good way to end up in the back corner of town." Which, Alys had learned since moving to Aiedo, was the location of the cemetery.

They went back to Galf's home in the residential section of town to the west of the marketplace, where Alys made dinner. Her father had taught her how to cook, and she was a hundred times better at it than Galf. A man had to have some weaknesses, after all, he'd joked, but the kitchen had become Alys's domain from day one. Galf then suited his actions to his words and went straight to bed after helping his apprentice with the dishes. His low, raspy snoring drifted out his door and down the hall to Alys's room, where she found it much more difficult to get to sleep.

Part of it was the excitement not only of a new case but a new _kind_ of case. She'd wanted to be a hunter to fight against evil and protect people (while getting paid for it), and the monsters she'd fought thus far, while dangerous and definitely a threat to people, weren't even intelligent, let alone evil. This was her first time to take on someone who'd willingly chosen to make his living at the expense of others--like the highwaymen who'd killed her parents, and would have killed her, too, if Galf hadn't saved her. That wasn't even a full year ago, and she hoped she could handle it.

In truth, though, Alys was a practical young woman, not at all the kind who'd transfer her grief into a psychopathic hatred of all criminals. Her nerves were mostly over whether she had the skills, not the mindset.

_Which is the real problem,_ she admitted to herself, _the reason you're staring at the ceiling, Alys. You don't want to disappoint Galf._ She'd already let him down with that moronic stunt on the training ground, and she didn't want to follow it up by botching the job. She owed the veteran hunter way too much for that.

It wasn't just that he'd saved her life. In a way, that was the least of it. He was a hunter, after all; he got _paid_ to save people and fight bandits. She was grateful, of course, but there were limits to how much you thanked a professional for doing his job. What she owed him for was what had come after–for not turning her over to the orphanage in Tiria, for making her realize that, as much as she might not be ready, her family's death meant that she had to make a serious decision about her life. Above all, for taking her as _his_ apprentice when she settled on the Guild, knowing that it meant taking responsibility for an emotionally bewildered teenager. In essence, he'd sentenced himself to being a second father to a girl who had the emotional baggage of losing her parents and lifestyle in addition to all the normal struggles of adolescence.

Saving her life may have been a job, but taking her as an apprentice was the act of a hero. Alys didn't see how she could ever repay him for it; the best she could do was to not add anything more to her tab, which was why it cut so deeply to disappoint him.

She rolled over and punched her fist into her pillow. Stupid to be worrying about this stuff! It was costing her time and rest and doing her no good at all. Come tomorrow, she'd have a job to do--a job to _learn_.

With a sigh, Alys flung herself down and thrust her worries out of her mind by an act of will. If trouble came, she'd face it when it was real, not before. At last, she slipped off into sleep.

It wasn't dreamless sleep, though. No will was that strong.


	3. Chapter 3

Although as a hunter trainee, Alys was learning to adjust her sleeping habits to her circumstances, she still had the natural habit she'd had as a little girl of rolling out of bed at first light when there was no other schedule. Thus she was dressed, packed, and had a light breakfast nearly prepared by the time Galf emerged from his room. With his customary efficiency, though, he was ready to go, breakfast eaten, leather armor and titanium plating in place, sword slung over his back and two knives at his belt in under thirty minutes. Alys started for the door.

"Hold up, Alys."

"Huh? I thought you were ready?"

"I am, but we're gonna get there by exercising our lips instead of our feet."

He opened his pack and took out a gold-hued ocarina--a telepipe.

"This is why I figured we could get a decent night's sleep. We'll save plenty of travel time, which'll be important. The trail's not getting any warmer. We'd have set out yesterday if it hadn't been so late."

"All right. Um...Galf, can you actually play one of those things?"

"Don't have to. The power'll work if you just blow into one end for ten minutes."

"Yeah, but that doesn't make it any easier on the listener." Alys had traveled by telepipe on her own once, when she was twelve, and given herself a splitting headache in the process. Music was _not_ one of her talents.

"Don't worry, girl. This old dog's still got a few tricks you haven't seen."

Galf lifted the pipe to his lips and set into a merry jig from Uzo. From there he segued into a native Motavian ballad, a Piatan drinking song, and the classic "Dragon's Eyes." Alys was getting caught up in the music, tapping her feet in time with a Nalyan waltz, so it took her off-guard when the telepipe suddenly crumbled into glowing dust motes that swirled up and around the hunters, leaving them standing just outside the Zeman city gates.

The gateguards nodded politely as Alys and Galf entered the town. Newcomers were a common sight, for Zema was a trade-town, a popular stop on the caravan routes between east and west Motavia. Beyond that, it was also the home to the sacred valley of life, Birth Valley. Pilgrims came from all across the planet, so the guards saw scholars, farmers, merchants, tinkers, artisans, and hunters, every kind of person.

While the hunters weren't new to Zema, Zema was quite new to Alys and she couldn't help rubbernecking a bit. The town was built right up against a towering, nearly vertical cliff that was at the south end of a mountain range. The cliff served as the north wall of the town, and even from the other side Alys could see where a mountain river became a hundred-foot waterfall, cascading down to the northwest corner of the city. It was a spectacular sight, one which Alys had never heard of.

The one thing she, and nearly everyone on the planet, _had_ heard of was Birth Valley. Straight down the main avenue of town, Alys could see the open mouth of the cavern entrance, framed by its own little gate. She didn't know why it was called a _sacred_ valley; she'd heard that the maze of twisting passages was inhabited by examples of unusual wildlife not seen anywhere else in the world, to justify the "valley of life" appellation, but the hunter couldn't tell what was sacred about having more monsters around. Or maybe the sacred part was that the creatures liked to stay in their dark, dank home instead of creeping out to snack on pilgrims or townsfolk.

All in all, though, Zema was an impressive sight for the first-time visitor. Alys had to remind herself that she was a visitor _on business_ and stopped playing sightseer long enough to catch up the several strides she had fallen behind her mentor.

"Kinda takes your breath away, doesn't it?" Galf commented.

"It does," Alys said, unashamed. "It's more spectacular and nearly as beautiful overall as Termi. It's lucky most of the buildings are one-story, so they don't obstruct the view. Or," she asked as a thought struck her, "is it really luck?"

Galf laughed heartily.

"Now, why would you suspect that there's a town law requiring a permit from the mayor to build anything two stories or taller, even on private land?"

"Given how much of Zema's business it must owe to transients, I'm not surprised they'd make sure to keep it as attractive as possible." Her father had been a merchant, after all, and she'd begun her training in the business before her parents' death. Indeed, the people they passed in the streets showed a quite remarkable variance in clothing and appearance that bore out her conclusion. Some were even blue-furred Motavians in their hoods and long cloaks. Alys amused herself, and practiced her observation skills, by trying to guess where the passerby were from and why they were in Zema while she followed Galf to a large house in a wealthy district of town.

The hunters' knock was answered by a haughty-looking servant, a man who obviously took pride in the fact that he worked for someone with wealth and power. He looked over Galf and Alys scornfully, not impressed by their traveling gear or the packs they carried. Sand worm leather was flexible and tough, providing sturdy protection from the elements and enemies alike, but it was rarely a contributor to high fashion.

"And just who might you be?" the servant asked with a barely concealed sneer.

"We're from the Hunter's Guild. Your employer sent for us," the veteran snapped. Galf had obviously seen far too many people like that in his time to be impressed. Then again, Alys was less than half his age and she wasn't any more convinced of the twit's importance than Galf was.

The servant's face openly displayed his emotions as he swiftly changed his mental impression of the two visitors. Hunters did not arrive at their clients' homes dressed for a social call.

"Y-yes, of course, do come in. My employer has been expecting you." He stepped back to let them enter. "If you would follow me?"

He led the way through the sprawling residence, crossing rooms and hallways furnished with expensive carpets, hangings, and ornaments before finally taking the hunters out into a sunny garden courtyard with an ornamental pool in the center. Alys glanced at Galf, who returned her dubious glance. The majordomo hadn't taken the most direct route to the garden door but had instead picked a course showing off his master's wealth.

Probably, she decided regretfully, it would not get this job off on the right foot if she were to toss the servant into the pond.

At the edge of the water, beneath the shade of overarching palms, sat a table surrounded by comfortable chairs. A man reclined in one, leafing through the pages of a thick, cloth-bound book, a glass of iced _vanja_, barrel-cactus juice, at his left hand..

"Excuse me, sir," the servant said.

"Yes, Marcus?"

"The hunters from the Guild are here, sir."

"Oh?" The man's eyebrows rose slightly, and he inserted a strip of ribbon into the book to mark his place before setting it aside. "I hadn't expected them for some days yet."

"We wanted to get started as quickly as possible, before the trail got cold. It's too bad the Guild doesn't have a set of branch offices, but that's what telepipes are for, isn't it?"

The servant withdrew as the hunters approached the table, and Alys got her first good look at their client. He was a well-fed man in his fifties, with clusters of laugh lines around his eyes and mouth but otherwise a pink, plump complexion. His brown hair was cut short when it could have easily been left longer to conceal a slightly receding hairline, which told Alys something about his character or at least what he wanted people to think about his character, and he had a neatly trimmed moustache. Unlike the opulence of his house, the client's clothing was in a simple style: shirt, vest, and trousers. Although the fabrics were expensive there were no elaborate patterns or complex embroidery. Nor did he wear any jewelry.

"Well, I'm certainly happy to avoid any unnecessary delay. Please, join me," he offered, gesturing for the hunters to sit. "Can I offer you refreshment?"

"We'd prefer to get right to business," Galf answered for them both.

"As you wish. As you no doubt have assumed, my name is Preston Cross."

"You can call me Galf. This is my assistant, Alys Brangwin."

Cross's eyebrows flicked upwards at the introduction.

"Galf, the Thunder Sword? I'm surprised you'd accept my commission."

"I can see why, judging by the help you've been able to find so far."

"Alys," Galf chided, but Cross just chuckled.

"It's quite all right. Marcus can be a bit trying at times, but he's very handy for depressing the pretensions of the various toadies and lickspittles my position invariably attracts. Still--the Thunder Sword!"

Galf got his usual look of mingled embarrassment and frustration that use of his nickname inevitably brought out. Alys couldn't repress a chuckle.

"Someday, girl, you're going to pick up a silly title of your own and we'll see who's doing the laughing. Still and all, better to be known for what I did well than for what I didn't, if you see what I mean."

He had, Alys reflected, a point.

"Anyway, that's enough barstool comedy for now. You've got a problem, Cross, and we're here to deal with it. A case of theft, your commission said?"

"Yes, theft, but more than that. Raw, wanton vandalism besides! Historic artifacts ruined!" The sudden passion took Alys by surprise after Cross's initial calm. "If mere theft was the only issue, I could have gone to the Zeman town guard. What's more, this man was clearly an expert professional. I doubt he'd stay in town long, so if I'm to bring this cur to heel I'll need someone whose jurisdiction extends beyond the local area."

"So what was stolen and when?" Galf asked.

"It happened two nights ago," Cross said.

"You got your commission to the Guild very fast," Alys remarked.

"I don't like to waste time when my property's at stake. I had a letter transmission sent to the Guild as soon as the guard was through questioning me." He paused, then leaned back in his chair before resuming. "As to the issue of what was taken, I think a bit of background would help to clarify matters."

Galf nodded.

"It's your show, and it's always good to know the game we're playing."

"I am a collector," Cross announced. "It's not that uncommon a hobby among people like myself with too much money and too much time on our hands." He smiled gently with the jest, but it seemed to Alys that it did not touch his eyes. It wasn't self-deprecating humor out of a genuine appreciation of the irony, but only an attempt to appear more congenial to his audience.

Unfortunately for him, his audience was one of the less gullible ones around.

"Specifically, I collect weapons. Some are valuable as works of art, some for metal and gems, some for their worth if used in combat by men and women like yourselves, and the ones that are the most precious of all to me, the ones that are a part of history and legend. I make an effort to protect my collection. There are walls, locked doors and windows, alarms, and other defenses against thieves. Two nights ago, those defenses were breached, expertly and professionally. A jewel was stolen from my collection, one single jewel, but more damage was done, senseless, inexplicable damage."

"In my experience, thieves, particularly experts, aren't too interested in doing damage when they could be running off with the loot," Galf said. "Tell me more."

"My household was awakened by the noise of a thunderous explosion," Cross began the story. "I can only describe it as being like a loud thunderclap, or...are you familiar with dynamite?"

Alys wasn't, but her mentor obviously was.

"An explosive chemical. You see it mixed up by Native Motavian engineers now and again, for mining mostly."

"Quite--and extremely loud. Most of the servants and I rushed to the collection room as soon as we were awakened. Devin--my groundskeeper--let out the dog in the back garden. We discovered a single weapons-case badly damaged, the window with part of the glass cut out of it, the alarm wire disarmed, and one more piece of work which I'll come to in a moment. Meanwhile, the guard dog apparently had a run-in with the thief, because we found it unconscious, drugged by some kind of blowgun dart. All of it indicative of an expert job, except the noise that woke us."

"Which was neither expert nor professional."

"Indeed. I can only assume it has something to do with this."

Cross reached down under the table and brought up a cloth-wrapped package. He undid it to reveal a three-foot staff, knobbed at the end, made of some dark-hued wood Alys didn't recognize. Carved into the knob was an odd symbol or rune, which she didn't recognize either. Galf picked it up and looked it over carefully.

"Hm. Strange wood. Doesn't look like any I've seen. Alys?" He offered the rod to her and she took it–then nearly dropped it again as a tingling sensation passed through her hand as soon as she gripped it.

"This is weird. I can feel something when I hold this."

"Oh" Cross said smoothly. "Do describe it, please."

"I don't know how, really; it's like the prickling when your hand falls asleep and it's starting to wake up, but it's all under the skin. Galf, what is this?"

She set the staff down quickly; the sensation stopped as soon as she let go.

"Beats the heck out of me. I didn't feel a thing," admitted her mentor, which really didn't make her feel any better.

"I'd wager," Cross suggested, "that you, Alys, are a user of the Foi technique, while you, Galf, are not. Am I correct?"

"Yeah, you're right," Galf said. "There's something about this stick that's got something to do with power over fire?"

"Exactly so," Cross told them, a spreading look of smug superiority cut off by Galf's quick understanding of the situation. "Somehow, a person's natural affinity for the technique reacts with the staff's magic, allowing them to sense its presence. This is a Fire Staff; it is believed to have been created by Espers long prior to the Great Collapse. The wood is from the laeruma tree, which does not grow on Motavia, and the symbol carved on the tip is, according to my references, the character for fire in a prehistoric Parmanian language said to be associated with these Espers."

"Magic?" Alys said, her tone somewhere between scorn and open disbelief. "Espers?" At the last second, she reined in her tongue before she started talking about fairy tales. They didn't need her getting them in trouble by stupidly shooting off her mouth.

"As I said, a relic of those bygone days. From what I've learned from correspondents of mine at Motavia Academy, not a unique item, but a rare historical curiosity nonetheless, all the more so since ancient magic of course no longer exists in today's world. It was quite valuable for these, but what made it the crown jewel of my collection was the fact that it was also in perfect working order."

"What did it do?" Alys asked.

"By merely holding the grip so that the character touched bare flesh, it could be willed to launch bolts of flame from the tip. This effect was quite similar to the Foi technique, but induced no mental fatigue in the wielder the way technique was done. Furthermore, anyone could so make use of it, no matter if one had any ability with Foi."

Alys whistled.

"Nice trick!"

"Oh, it was."

"Since you've been throwing around the past tense, though," Galf said, "I'm guessing that now you'd be lucky to get a spark, let alone a firebolt, outta the thing?"

"That's exactly right," Cross confirmed. "Somehow, the Fire Staff has lost all of its power."


	4. Chapter 4

"Drained of power," Alys repeated. "But what could do something like that?"

Preston Cross's face split in a mirthless smile.

"That is what I'm paying the two of you to find out."

Alys flushed with anger and would have made a hotheaded reply, but a cool flick of Galf's gaze in her direction made her damp things down at once. She could almost hear his voice saying, "So you don't like your client? So what? His meseta's still good, isn't it?"

What he actually said out loud, though, was, "And you're sure it's not just that it ran out of power the last time you used it?"

"Quite. I've experimented in the past. It can be used between twenty-five and thirty times each day, and...how shall I phrase it?...'recharges' itself after twenty-four hours, no doubt by drawing on the ambient power in the environment the way we do in order to use techniques. This time, it has failed to do so."

"Can't deny it's suspicious. You get the big bang and the next day your magic toy isn't working."

"That's how I saw it, at least," Cross tried his poor-little-trader act again. "You're the experts in this area, though. Just to clarify your objectives, most of all I want the thief. I go to a good deal of trouble to protect my collection. I will not have my privacy violated in such a fashion, and I want the entire underworld to know it!" He struck his fist on the table. "For an expert thief like this one to receive fifteen years at hard labor for burglary, theft, and destruction of property will send a message to the scum and riffraff of the inevitable consequences!"

He took a deep breath to help him restore his calm, then went on.

"The bonus for recovering stolen property listed in my commission was in fact, something of a misnomer. To earn that bonus, what I truly want you to do is to learn _how_ the Fire Staff's power was lost. I don't want further incidents of this time affecting my valuable property! I need to know what happened--and more importantly, how to stop it from happening again. Lastly, if in some way you are able to return the Fire Staff to working order, I would gladly see my way clear to yet an additional bonus--say, another five thousand meseta. Are these terms understood?"

"And appreciated," Galf said. "Now, can we get a look at the scene of the crime, as it were?"

"Of course. I'll have you shown to my collection room."

A servant, thankfully not the obnoxious majordomo, quickly arrived in response to Cross's summons. As he led them to the collection room, Galf took the opportunity to question him about the night of the break-in, but found that his story tallied with Cross's version so far as he was aware of what had happened.

"Too bad he didn't know anything new," Alys said as they were left alone in the large room. "Still, it's nice to have some confirmation of Cross's story. You've told me a few tales of horror about clients who didn't give you the straight goods on a job for one reason or another."

"Everybody's got secrets," Galf agreed. "The trick's to keep them disentangled from each other, and the job. So, take a look around and tell me what you see."

The collection room was large beneath the domed ceiling common for ventilation in Motavian architecture. The floor was done up in fancy tiles of black and white polished stone, with gold-bordered purple carpets under the tables. There were wall-mounted display cases, shelves, and free-standing tables alike, each to best show off the variety of implements of violence and destruction featured within.

Alys didn't understand it, herself. She and Galf owned a variety of weapons, all of which they used, as appropriate, on the job. Cross didn't use anything in his collection for something practical, and they didn't even have any sentimental memories attached to him personally, whatever their history. If Cross had been a scholar, well, there was some value to studying history and making the past as clear as possible, but Alys just couldn't understand how anyone could romanticize battle, which was perhaps the most grimly pragmatic thing in the entire world.

_You're losing focus,_ she told herself sharply. _This is about the crime, not Preston Cross's weird habits. Worry about him when he becomes relevant. You're a hunter, not a tourist!_

One of the room's four walls was not studded with displays; this one was pierced by three windows that let light into the hall. The latticed windows had diamond-shaped panes that echoed the design of the floor tiles. Alys glanced out and verified that all those faced the walled garden where Cross still sat sipping iced vanja.

The window that had been broken through was the one nearest the door; it had been covered from the outside with a large board to prevent further intrusion. Alys noted a circular piece cut out of one pane near the latch, the shape precise and the edges neat.

"This was done with a special tool," she concluded aloud. "That supports Cross's idea that the thief was a professional. An amateur would just have smashed the pane and risked alerting the house with the noise." She then found the cut alarm wire and the globule of resin that had been used to hold it. "This, too. He or she checked for an alarm trap and came prepared to disarm it."

"Also which window was chosen," Galf told her. "Could be random chance but I doubt it. Someone comes rushing in the door here, that window is almost exactly off to their right. The other two windows are in the field of vision, but that one wouldn't be seen at first glance. Care to guess why?"

Alys thought it over for a few seconds, then figured it out.

"It buys time. Until someone knows the thief's point of entry, they don't know which way to start chasing. Depending on how long the arriving people stare at where the theft happened, over on the left side midway down, they might give the thief an extra five seconds, ten, or even more."

Galf smiled broadly at his trainee.

"Good work! That's exactly right. Now go and take a look at the actual site of the theft."

Alys crossed the room to a shelf where the wood planking and the wall behind it were blasted and blackened in a circular pattern. The center point of the effect was a fancy case, two feet wide, one long, and about four inches deep, made of light-colored palm wood with brass fittings set with semi-precious stones. It had once been a work of art in and of itself, but now the wood had been blackened, chipped, and fractured. Opening the case, Alys saw a pair of daggers resting in a scorched velvet interior, their once-beautiful blades cracked and broken as if struck a titanic blow.

"I'm not surprised something weird happened with the Fire Staff," she said out loud. "It looks like someone hit this box with a Foi tech, maybe even Gifoi. These melted fittings imply a lot of heat, but the wood didn't catch flame, and fire techniques aren't good for ignition unless you deliberately want them to be." Just one of the vagaries of mystic power, she supposed. There were probably white-coats at Motavia Academy who studied the whys and wherefores; all Alys cared about was that the results were predictable.

"That sounds logical. Cross said that a gem was stolen. Any sign of it?"

Alys glanced over the case.

"Yeah, here, around back. There's a space where a stone was, but it's missing now. There's no sign that it was blasted to powder, and none of the other ones were. Hey, wait a second. Galf, could you come look at this?"

"Glad to."

The veteran hunter went over and Alys showed him the back of the case.

"So what am I looking at, here?"

"Well, do you see the setting where the gem is missing from? The metal has been twisted and melted, so it's a bit hard to see, but don't these look like scratches?"

"Dern, Alys, you're right. The damage from whatever hit the box has pretty well obliterated most of the traces, but here and there I can definitely see the marks where someone pried something loose here. Cross was right; the gem's not just missing, but stolen. It was deliberately removed before whatever happened to this box was set off."

Alys set the case back down.

"So what does this mean? A trained, professional thief sneaks into the house without alerting anyone. He passes up items of historical value, to say nothing of stuff he can easily break down for cash value like that ugly thing." She pointed to a jewel-encrusted sword with a gold handguard hanging on the wall. "Instead he goes to this case. All the stones on this thing together can't be worth much."

"Maybe five hundred meseta to buy them from a jeweler, and he'd be lucky to see half that from a fence. Whereas the amberine pommel-stone on that sword you pointed out would fetch a thousand for the thief by itself."

Alys nodded, carried away by her theme.

"That's right. Now, I suppose it's possible that it doesn't have to work this way, but I'd expect a thief that's so good at sneaking into a house to be able to recognize the valuable loot and grab it first!"

"Yep."

"So what's going on? Why this case in particular? And why set off that explosion?"

Galf stroked his beard.

"Seems to me that if the thief was an expert--and it's darned obvious he was--we oughta be giving him credit for it."

"I don't understand," Alys admitted. She'd learned early on in her apprenticeship that Galf respected it when she asked for help and advice (he was supposed to be teaching her, after all) but had no patience for it if she kept her mouth shut because she didn't want to admit she was clueless. In the hunter business, pride got people killed.

"Well, if he went after that gem, then it had to be that it was what he wanted most from here."

"Galf, even if there was one valuable stone on this case, no one would mount it on the back of the box where nobody would ever see it."

"Which tells me our thief wasn't looking for cash value."

Alys thought it through. Her mentor's logic held.

"That makes sense. Heck, he didn't even grab up a few trinkets on his way out. He didn't even take the _case_, just pried the one stone out of it. Which in retrospect was single-minded and probably dumb because it focuses attention on what he did take and leaves evidence of what happened."

"And when you combine the concepts of an expert thief and a single target of no _known_ special monetary value, what do you get?" Her mentor's grin was wolfish, and after a moment, Alys's spread to match it.

"Hired henchman," she said.

"Got it in one, girl. Let's go ask our client a few questions about this case and where it came from."

Cross was writing a letter at the garden table when Galf and Alys returned to him, but he pushed aside the paper and ink-bottle at once.

"Have you learned anything?"

"Questions, mostly," Galf said.

"Oh?"

"The case with the daggers, the one that got hit by whatever made the noise. Where'd you get it?"

"A private sale," Cross said.

"From?"

"I don't see as how that's any of your concern," he replied coldly. Galf just gave a long-suffering groan.

"Look here, Preston. We work for you. We don't work for the town of Zema. I don't care what kind of shady deal you had going--or at least, I do care, but only to figure out what makes the things important. If you don't want to level with us, we can get going back to Aiedo and take a commission we actually have a chance of collecting the fee on. Your pick."

Cross and Galf looked at one another steadily. Then, as Alys had expected, the client gave in.

"Oh, all right. Besides, there's no evidence I did anything wrong. I just made a purchase. I had no way of knowing if there was anything amiss."

"That's one theory. So where'd you buy the daggers from?"

"It was a man named Argus. He runs an apothecary shop on the east side of town."

Antique daggers from an apothecary. Yeah, sure, Cross didn't know if there was anything "amiss." Still, as Galf had pointed out, no one was paying them to track down stolen daggers. It was like dealing with Bain--until Cross made it her problem, she was better off just keeping her mouth shut. Besides, they had a fence to roust.


	5. Chapter 5

Alys had to admit that her first criminal hunt was certainly giving her an education. She'd known about the existence of people like smugglers and fences, but this was her first opportunity to actually meet such crooks in the flesh.

"How are we going to handle this, Galf?" she asked her mentor as they crossed the town to Argus's store.

"Sneaky is out. Nobody is going to mistake us for anything other than fighters unless we spend time we haven't got on disguises. Only way to get the information is to bribe, force, or trick it out of him."

"So if trick isn't going to work, and we're not exactly made of meseta, that just leaves force. Good. I like force."

"Bloodthirsty whelp, aren't you?"

The fifteen-year-old hunter shrugged.

"Hey, you didn't want to make trouble for our client for buying from a fence. That doesn't mean we can't make trouble for the fence himself."

Galf gave her a quirky half-smile.

"You're learning, kid."

"So how are we going to handle it?" Alys repeated, wanting specifics.

"Not sure yet. Have to take a look at the situation first."

Finding Argus's shop wasn't particularly difficult; the traditional satchel sign of the apothecary hung outside, slowly creaking in the faint mountain breeze. Like many of the town's buildings it was free-standing, and Alys and Galf took a stroll past it and around the block to get a look from all sides. A plan was quickly formed, and Alys walked into the shop alone.

It was not what she had expected; Alys was young yet, and hadn't quite worked life's cliches out of her system. Rather than a dark, close den filled with cramped shelves, she was surprised to find Argus's store was light and airy, with a faint aroma of herbs. The scent reminded her faintly of one of her mother's potpourri jars, a clean scent that made her think of home and a life that had passed. A bell jingled merrily as she entered. There were no other customers, which she and Galf had been fairly certain of--no one had entered or left in the ten minutes before Alys did.

"May I help you?"

The shopkeeper was about Alys's height, but soft and plump with graying whiskers. His face was round, and with his rosy cheeks and broad smile looked friendly, even jolly. Like the store he was nothing like her expectations, which had been more along the lines of a weaselly rat. Given that cliches only became cliches because they were true at least some of the time, she started to wonder if she was in the wrong place.

"Argus?"

"Yes, indeed, I am. Now, you look to be...a guard, perhaps? Or a hunter? Would you be interested in monomate to deal with injuries? Perhaps a generalized poison antidote, if you intend to venture into the wilderness? Abe Frogs will be maturing in record numbers thanks to the high rainfall this season, and you can't be too prepared."

"Good advice," Alys agreed. "For instance, you've got a nice little shop here. Are you prepared to answer questions about how you pay for it?"

"Of course. Actually, it's quite an amusing story. There was this five-legged scorpirus, you see, and it--"

"I'm not amused."

"Well, really, I'd think you'd at least wait for the end of the first sentence."

"Argus, I work for Preston Cross," Alys told him. "He's _paying_ me to be unamused. After what you did to him that's going to be a pretty universal attitude among his employees. Or, at least, those of us who carry sharp and pointed metal objects."

She drew a slasher just in case Argus learned better with visual aids.

"But I don't understand," Argus said. "I don't owe Preston Cross anything, either merchandise or payment."

"It's not what you haven't given him, Argus; it's what you did. You might remember a case, with two daggers?"

"Daggers?" He wasn't admitting anything--probably not a bad decision on his part, given that he couldn't be sure Alys wasn't a town guard trying to bluff a confession out of him. Probably it was more of a defense mechanism than a conscious thought, a mental reflex for a fence. "Miss, this is a herbalist's shop. I sell medicines, not weapons. Now, if that's what you're after, I suggest you try Andrew Janec's, just two shops down and three over. I'm sure that he–"

"It's not even noon yet, Argus. I try to save my daily serving of bull for a little later in the day." She was fairly proud of that line, though she figured it needed some work.

"I, that is to say--"

"How about we cut through the crap here, okay? You're a fence. You sold Preston Cross a pair of fancy daggers, about which he didn't ask questions. He probably should have, because there turned out to be some fairly serious issues with his purchase, such as how it exploded in his house and ruined part of his collection. Am I making myself clear, Argus? Cross wants to have a few words with the seller, so how about you go ahead and tell me who that was, so we can overlook questions about why you foisted the daggers off on my client on the first place."

-X X X-

He should have known better, Argus told himself. He wasn't some infant. He'd been in this game as long as the girl had been alive, and he'd known the stench of trouble when it came into his shop with those daggers. Fear and greed had overridden good sense, though, as they so often did. And now look where he was, face to face with some punk kid enforcer. The young ones were the worst--full of themselves and with something to prove. They'd ask first and think (about how a respectable businessman like Argus with no evidence against him would be happy to report the young thug to the guard) only after a painful beating had been delivered and valuable merchandise smashed. That wouldn't keep Preston Cross from disowning them _later_, but the problem was _now._

And worst of all, it was about that derned set of knives he'd foisted off on Cross. Anything else, he'd have laughed it off, but this had come around to bite Argus in the rump just like he'd been afraid it would. If it had truly done what she'd said it had (and who was to say it hadn't? Not Argus, that was for sure!) Then this was going to go on for a lot more than one encounter with one hotheaded teenage girl.

Fortunately, Argus was a farsighted man. Recognizing that his business had a certain element of risk, he was prepared to exercise the better part of valor at a moment's notice. More than prepared, actually; he'd been suspecting this would happen ever since he'd gotten involved in this mess.

"All right," he said with a heavy sigh, his shoulders sagging miserably. Always make them think they've gained the upper hand, he thought. It always put the prancing fighter-types on a smug pedestal, and when a person's nose was that high in the air it tended to miss what was slipping beneath it. "I've got to live in this town, too."

"So what was the name?" she asked.

"Hey, I don't remember every transaction that goes on here. I do a fair amount of business. That's why I keep records." Stupid girl looked like she believed it, too. As if he'd keep incriminating names and details written down in his own hand! He had books, sure, but that was to track the numbers, not the names. "I'll get the name for you, then, hey, we can all be happy."

The girl nodded, a smug grin on her face. Thought she'd won out over him just because she could--probably--kick his hindquarters to Molcum and back again. Her kind always did.

Argus slipped behind the counter and into one of the shop's two back rooms. One was the storeroom and laboratory, and the other his office. He kept business records in the office, but that wasn't what he wanted from it. Instead, he was looking for something else.

The back window.

It wasn't by accident that the window was large enough to climb through. In fact, he thought as he flipped the latch back, it was an example of good planning. He stuffed a bag of meseta (in high-denomination pieces for easy transport) into his pocket, then pushed the shutters. Clambering up on the sill was not effortless for a man of his bulk but not so hard as one might have expected, either. Argus was all about deceptive appearances, in one way or another. He wondered how long it would take Cross's girl to figure out that gee, maybe she ought to check why he was taking so long.

Argus chuckled at the thought, which was when a large hand reached out from the side, clenched in the front of his tunic, and pulled him the rest of the way through the window to land, sprawling, in the dust.

"Doesn't it get boring, being so predictable?" the big, gray-bearded hunter asked him pleasantly.

-X X X-

Alys waved a friendly hello when Galf ushered Argus back into the shop. It had all worked out just like her mentor had suggested: by giving Argus enough rope, he'd promptly hang himself, at least to the extent that his flight had been as much as an admission that he'd known something was wrong with the case of daggers. Plus, having his escape thwarted would hopefully take some of the fight out of the fence, making it easier to convince him to answer questions. Galf shoved Argus into a chair.

"Let's take this from the top," the hunter said. "Alys, did you tell our friend what we're after?"

"The person he got the case of daggers from. We hadn't gotten any further when he decided to make a run for it."

"Good; let's take it from there, then. Where did they come from, and why did you sell them to Cross?"

"I, that is..." He wouldn't meet Galf's gaze.

"Look, I don't know what the score is," Galf said, "but you've got to live in this town with Preston Cross, and he didn't strike me as the kind of guy who's nice to people who screw around with his collection. Heck, he doesn't even have a real job to keep him busy, so that gives him all the time in the world to plan nasty revenges on people."

"I thought you two were supposed to be the nasty revenge."

"We're hunters from the Guild," Galf clarified. "Our job is to get the one responsible for what went down, and that's not you."

"L-look, I know how you--"

Alys decided to step in, hoping that her timing was right. She smoothly stepped up to the herbalist, careful not to block Galf's line of vision, and grabbed Argus by his collar, hauling him up face-to-face.

"Listen, you sack of crawler droppings, I can tell you're scared of this seller, whomever he or she is. What you don't seem to understand, though, is that someone keeping information from me is the fifteenth-most dangerous thing in this world--and I don't see any of the top fourteen in this room just now. Except him," she amended with a nod in Galf's direction, then fixed her eyes back on Argus's with her best glare.

It worked.

"All right, all right! I don't know how you know, but yes, I was sold the daggers with specific instructions to resell them to Cross. Not that there's much chance I'd do anything else. I mean, seriously, they're nice weapons in a nice case, but Cross would give me twice what they're worth on their own because of who made them and why." He snorted derisively. "Collectors. Who can figure 'em?"

Alys wondered if she needed to rethink her own opinion, given that they'd found a point of agreement.

"Did you know why you were supposed to sell to Cross?"

"No, and I wasn't asking. He sold me the whole set for two hundred meseta. Two hundred! That's maybe a fifth of what I'd give _after_ I haggled the seller down, on a normal sale. I couldn't pass that up–and I got a pretty good idea that maybe I _shouldn't_ pass it up, if I wanted to stay in good health."

"So this 'he' who sold it wasn't the nicest guy."

Argus shook his head.

"Forget nasty. This guy was _scary_. Not scary like you two, scary like he would slice me up for the fun of it, let alone to get back at me. He had spiky green hair and eyes that never quite looked at me, if you know what I mean? Like they were always focused on something else, and I was just in the field of vision."

"What was his name?" Alys revealed her inexperience.

"He didn't tell me, and this isn't exactly a business where you make a point of asking."

"So what _do_ you know?"

"He was maybe thirty, about as tall as your partner, there, but not as big--a little on the skinny side, even. His face was kind of sharp, and he had this little goatee that just made it worse. And I'll tell you one more thing: he had a black headband with a skull on it."

He said that like it meant something besides a complete lack of style, so Alys glanced at Galf.

"Sailors from Valhalla wear those," he explained. "It's kind of a badge of their town militia, but not really an official part of the uniform."

She'd heard of Valhalla, an island village north of Zema, which had grown up as a hive of exiles, outcasts, and general ne'er-do-wells. To a certain extent it had settled down, but was still known as a den for pirates, looters, and black marketeers. Argus's kind of place, come to think of it.

"That's right," Argus said.

"Looks like we've got somewhere to start, then," Alys said, and dropped the fence back into his seat.

"For all the good it'll do you," Argus said resentfully. "That psychotic freak'll give you all you can handle."

"You'd better wish us luck," Galf advised him. "Unlike your friend, we don't have any reason to come and see you again. C'mon, Alys."

With that parting shot, the hunters left the herbalist to his own concerns.

"If there's a Valhalla connection, we'd best make a trip up to Norl." This was a little fishing hamlet about a half-day's travel north from Zema, across the large merchants' bridge that spanned the inlet there. "We might catch up to the thief there, if he really is making for Valhalla and if he's got to travel by regular means."

"That's likely. There aren't many telepipes made each year, and the Hunter's Guild has deals with the crafters that we get to purchase most of them for our use. But the theft was two nights ago. Why would the thief stay in Norl instead of taking a boat right away?"

Galf flashed her a broad grin.

"Because Norl is a fishing village. That means every boat--and every sailor--in town is out to sea for a week at a time, filling the holds with their catch, then spend two or three days ashore resting up, selling their catch, and restocking."

"So if the thief is there, he'd have to wait for the fleet to come in a prepare to go out again."

"Exactly."

Alys returned the smile.

"In that case, I'd better try and find my walking boots, shouldn't I?"

"Yeah, I figure we'll get there just in time to interrupt our boy's dinner."

"Or girl's--the seller and the thief might not be the same person."

"Probably aren't," Galf agreed. "The thief was an expert, and that takes control, which it doesn't sound like the crazy man had much of."

"So how do we recognize him or her?"

"We don't. We let the locals do it for us. Not too many strange faces in Norl go unnoticed."

"Good point," Alys admitted.

"Hey, by the way, nice work in there."

"Thanks."

"I've gotta ask, though...fifteenth?"

She tossed him a playful grin.

"I thought I'd leave some room for improvement. You _do_ have more to teach me, don't you?"

"Not about being a wiseacre, obviously."

She chuckled all the way to the city gates.


	6. Chapter 6

It would have been cruel to compare Norl to Zema in terms of awe-inspiring urban glories, but it did have its own source of beauty, the cobalt-blue waves that stretched out for miles from the land's edge. Compared to the dry and dusty ground they'd crossed on the way there, the sea looked beautiful and pure.

"I wish..." Galf murmured softly, looking out across the water.

"What?"

He shook his head. "Never mind. A foolish dream, that's all." He started down the gentle slope leading towards the village before Alys had the chance to ask more questions. She was a little hurt by that, not that he didn't want to share his thoughts but that he didn't trust her not to pry. Unless something had specific relevance to her job, other people's private lives weren't her concern. Galf, she thought, ought to know that.

But then again, she thought as she followed along, she wasn't exactly polite and unfailingly rational about her private problems, either.

The truth of Galf's assumption about strangers sticking out in Norl was made plain as they stepped onto the dusty track that served as the village's main--and only--street, their passage followed by curious eyes from several windows. Of the twenty buildings or so, only two appeared to be shops: a general store that like those in most small towns no doubt sold everything from tools to clothing to dry goods, and a saloon. Farther down, they could see a small forest of masts outlined against the darkening sky. Apparently, the fishing fleet was in port.

"Waterfront or bar?" Alys asked.

Galf drummed his fingers against his belt.

"Why not both? I'll take the boats; you can see what they know at the bar."

"What, you'd sent your female apprentice into a saloon full of fishermen who haven't seen a girl in a week?" she said, only half in jest.

"I have faith you won't kill anyone that didn't really deserve it, Alys."

"Gee, thanks a lot."

"Besides, you're underage. You can back out of any drinking contests without looking like a wuss. Not much point in finding our guy if I have to drink myself senseless in order to do it, especially since you don't know Anti to sober me up."

She grinned at him.

"Somewhere in there was something that sounded like a good point, old man. Keep your eyes open."

"You too. If you need me, just yell. Not much chance of missing the sound of a fight around here."

"That's the second time you've anticipated a bar brawl, Galf. What, don't you think I can ask around about some stranger without starting trouble?"

He smiled broadly at her.

"Let's just say I remember Mile."

"At least I have the Thunder Sword to come bail me out."

Galf winced.

"You fight dirty, girl."

"I had a good teacher," she tossed back with a wink, and headed towards the bar.

The tavern didn't have a proper door, only an open archway, not all that uncommon for a back-country Motavian saloon. The building was jammed by over thirty men who packed the bar and tables, sitting, drinking, gambling, laughing, or cursing. Alys's eyes swept the room, seeing plain clothes, work-roughened hands, and bearded faces, many beneath knit caps. None looked like he might be anything other than a fisherman, with the only exceptions being a dapper gent with an apron and needle-thin moustache tending bar, and the waitress in her low-cut blouse who sashayed amongst the crowd, laughing and joking with her patrons. More than one man looked up as Alys crossed the room; appreciative stares and broad grins were the rule.

"Hey, gorgeous, new in town?" one man called, then guffawed at his attempt at a joke. The barmaid cuffed him on the side of the head.

"Ah, leave the girl alone, Vint. Can't ye see she's just a kid?"

An open question, in fact, reflected Alys. In some of the rural villages of Motavia, she'd likely have been married, maybe even a mother by her current age. On the other hand, among the thriving middle class of urban centers like Aiedo or Piata, there was time for adolescence, years of maturing between schoolchild and adult. As an apprentice, the latter category fit her more than the former, so she figured the barmaid was more right than not. In a year or so, though, she'd be a full-fledged hunter.

She wondered if it would make a difference in her relationship with Galf, being a partner rather than a trainee.

_Enough daydreaming, Brangwin. You've got a job to do._

She squeezed into an open space at the bar; there were no stools, allowing for greater capacity, not to mention an easy way to tell when someone had had enough. The bartender came over.

"Evening," she said.

"Good evenin'," the man murmured, his eyes curious and a little wary. "Don't get a lot of strangers around here. What'll it be?"

Alys tossed a twenty-meseta piece on the bar.

"Mila."

The bartender took the money, his eyebrows raising slightly, then turned to fill a cup from a steaming kettle and stirred in spices. The juice of the thorn palm, served hot, was a common drink, but in a tavern it was more often seen in its fermented form, neimila. _That_ could put large people with strong constitutions under the table.

"You want something else with that?" the bartender asked. She'd paid about four times the drink's price, after all.

"I'm looking for another stranger, someone who's come to town in the last couple of days."

"Seems to me, passing on gossip to strangers ain't on the menu," the bartender said, and set Alys's change on the counter.

Cute, she thought sarcastically, very cute. It was time for a different approach.

"Hey, boys!" she called out, her voice easily cutting through the steady murmur of lower-pitched male speech. The resulting hush was impressive, the only sounds a dart thunking into the wall off-target and several pairs of dice rattling to a stop. "I'm looking for a stranger, somebody who came to town in the last couple of days and wanted a boat ride with no questions asked. Could any of you help me out?"

"I could," announced a scar-faced man with black hair, "if you give me a reason to." He looked her over assessingly from head to foot, but there was a glint of humor in his gaze, she thought, that made Alys decide to play along instead of introducing his face to a nearby solid object.

"So what can I do to make you more...willing?" she tossed back.

The scar-faced fisherman chuckled.

"How 'bout a little wager, then. I always like to test my luck off the water, so Fortune figures I don't need to on it. You beat me, and I tell you everything I know. You don't, and you get to buy a round for the house--unless you'd rather give me a kiss." He wiggled his eyebrows in mock invitation.

"Deal. That's presuming, though, that 'everything you know' doesn't amount to 'Sorry, haven't seen him.' In that case, you get to pay for the damage from the fight. So what's your game?"

"Darts." He pointed at the battered board hanging on the wall.

"Oh, yes, the traditional game where drunk people throw sharp objects across the room. You're on."

The fisherman plucked two of the small, flat throwing knives out of the board and retrieved the third from the wall, hooking his fingers through the steel rings on their base. Alys's mother, who'd collected tales of that sort, had once told her that the game had evolved from assassin's weapons.

_You do not need to be thinking about her right now!_

"You want to go first?" her opponent offered.

"No thanks. Why don't you go on and show me what I'm up against?"

"If that's how you like it."

He strolled jauntily over to the mark on the floor where they'd presumably throw from. All eyes in the place were on them, enjoying the free show. Side bets were offered with murmured whispers.

"All right, lassie, here we go," the scarred man announced, and then with a smooth overhand motion tossed three bullseyes.

"Not bad," Alys admitted, fetching the darts.

"Might be a little tough to beat that, wouldn't you say? And if you might recall the terms of our wager, if you don't beat me, I win."

She had agreed to that, hadn't she?

Damn.

Alys walked to the mark, weighing the blades in her hand, gauging the shot. Then she whipped her arm out in a backhand arc like she used for throwing her slashers. Her darts, too, thunked into the center spot of the target.

On one throw.

The room instantly fell so silent that one could hear a jaw drop. Or in this case, about a dozen jaws or so as the locals watched disbelievingly, but the scar-faced man only grinned while shaking his head.

"Dern, suckered again. Okay, girl, your boy showed up in town yesterday, from what they tell me. We got the boats in today, so he tried to buy passage over to Valhalla. Can't tell you why 'cause I didn't ask. For a thousand meseta you tend not to be too fast with the questions. I said we'd take him out tomorrow."

"Do you know where he'd be now?"

"Sal's, I'm assuming, since he's not in here drinking. She's got a spare room she rents out to folks passing through or those of us who get our wives a little more torched off at us then usual. It's three houses down from here."

"Thanks. Out of curiosity, what does he look like?"

"You're looking for him, aren't you? Seems to me as you'd ought to know."

"Ought to, but don't. Thieves try to avoid letting people find out that kind of thing, as a rule."

The scar-faced man laughed heartily.

"Sassy wench, aren't you? Anyhow, your boy's about your height, has black hair, and one of those faces you forget two seconds after seeing it. He's a shade on the skinny side, but wiry, you know, so you get the idea he's not so much of a wuss as he seems at first glance."

In other words, an almost generic example of the thief/spy/assassin subtype. Galf would know if most of that sort actually looked so typical. He definitely wasn't the one who had sold the case of daggers to Argus, and yet he was heading for Valhalla, which opened up more scenario combinations than Alys cared to think about.

"Thanks." She turned to go, then stopped and looked back. "Hey, if he paid you a thousand meseta, why are you helping me at all?"

"Girl, you reek of hunter. That makes my passenger a crook. Seems to me that I've got no obligation to repay a thief money he paid me to help escape the law, right? You drag him off to jail, I'm a thousand meseta richer without having to leave port. I like those kind of jobs." He grinned widely and added, "Besides, you're one heck of a lot prettier than that guy is."

Alys chuckled, then tossed five meseta to the bartender.

"Thanks, and have a round on me. I like a guy who _doesn't_ lose like a man."

Galf was coming up the street as his apprentice left the saloon.

"Any luck?" Alys asked.

"Nope. Only guys still hanging around the waterfront were offloading their catch and hadn't even gotten back to the village. The boats had just come in today. How'd it go with the natives lucky enough to get to the ale?"

"Pretty well. I've got a description and know the place where he's supposed to be staying, all for ten meseta." She couldn't help but let a trace of pride into her voice.

"Pleased with yourself, aren't you?"

"Yeah," Alys said, a bit warily, but instead of a lesson on pride she got a smile.

"Well, you should be. Let's go keep up your winning streak, so fill me in."

She told him about Sal's and gave him the stranger's description--or, more accurately, the lack thereof.

"Do we try the same plan as last time?"

"It worked on Argus. This time, though, you take the back side, in case he tries to make a break for it, too, when I come busting in his door. These old legs aren't too fond of chasing down youngsters who don't want to be caught."

Alys nodded, marveling as she did at Galf's apparent lack of worry. This was the first time that they'd gotten close to the thief, the first real breakthrough in the job. Before, they'd only gathered information, but now they were going to confront a human opponent for the first time in Alys's career as a hunter. Her stomach was a knot, her mind whirling with the dozens of possible actions the thief could take and how she was supposed to combat them. She envied Galf the ease that allowed him to joke about the process and hoped that with experience she'd develop something of the same confidence.

They split up, and Alys went down the little alley between Sal's house and the next one in the row. Fortunately, the back windows--it _had_ to be the back, Galf had said; he'd never seen a boardinghouse yet that rented out a front room--were shuttered, the stranger choosing privacy over visibility. That was all to the good; people with guilty secrets tended to react badly to the sight of others sneaking around whether or not there was any real threat, and an armed hunter definitely looked threatening even to the innocent.

She didn't have long to wait. Angry shouts and the crash of overturned furniture heralded the shutters being thrown open. The man who appeared, clambering through with a knife in hand definitely matched the stranger's description. She'd half-expected the knife; it was an ideal weapon in the kind of close-quarters fight Alys associated with sneak thieves. Still, using it while climbing through a window was another thing altogether, so she made her move quickly.

Even as Alys moved, the stranger caught sight of her and pulled himself the rest of the way through the window with a quick jerk of his body, fell to the dusty ground, and tried to roll to a defensible position all at once. Eschewing finesse, Alys lashed out and slammed her boot into the escapee's midsection before he had time to protect himself. He flopped over onto his back and, more importantly, dropped the knife.

"There's a man in Zema who'd like a few words with you," she said, hauling the man to his feet by his shirt front. She'd overestimated the situation, though, for as he was pulled off the ground he grabbed a boot knife and cut up at her abdomen. Alys barely caught a glimpse of the move at the edge of her vision and did the only thing she could, shoving the stranger away from her while falling back herself. The sharp point swept by, missing her vulnerable belly, and both combatants fell. As they hit the ground, they had already gone into controlled falls, absorbing the impact and getting to their feet as quickly as they could.

Alys's hand dropped to a slasher--folded, the blades made a utilitarian if slightly off-balance dagger--but did not draw it. They needed to take this man alive, so he could answer questions. There was another reason, though, that she hesitated to draw: although she'd killed monsters before, she had never taken a person's life, and without even realizing it consciously she flinched away from the possibility.

Her opponent had no such scruples, though. With a quick move of his free hand he produced a second blade, this one a short, slim dagger with no quillions. _Wrist sheath_, Alys guessed. Then the man came at her.

Galf had warned her during her training against taking on a knife fighter unarmed, and Alys quickly learned the truth of his words, sustaining a shallow cut across her right forearm and another on the back of her hand while she worked to evade or block the stranger's attacks. Her plan, such as it had been, was to counterstrike with a disarming hold or throw, but he simply wasn't giving her any chance; the thief was too skilled to fall for that kind of trick.

Thankfully, Alys had bought enough time for Galf to get out of the house and run around back. The stranger heard the big hunter's footsteps and turned, then disengaged from Alys to try and get away, but Galf pressed the attack before the thief could get clear and run off.

The popular idea of a sword was not unlike an axe, a heavy, slow, powerful weapon that owed its effectiveness to weight and the wielder's strength--a view especially common among knife-fighters and those who favored similar "speed" weapons. Nothing could be further from the truth, however, as Galf demonstrated most effectively for about forty-seven seconds. His two-handed grip afforded exceptional control over the razor-edged ceramic blade, allowing him to strike quickly while not overextending himself to give up his guard position. Two weapons became one and then zero as the Thunder Sword systematically disarmed the stranger and delivered a crushing blow with the flat of the blade that left the thief twitching in the dust, all without ever giving up the advantage in reach his weapon's length provided.

Alys had only seen Galf in real combat against another person once before, when he had saved her from the highwaymen that had killed her parents. Now that she had a much better idea of the subtleties involved in combat, she found the experience of seeing him at work even more impressive, since she could appreciate not merely the victory but the steps that led up to it.

Apparently, the stranger was equally impressed. He looked up at the blade at his throat, then over at Alys (who had finally gotten her slashers drawn) and decided that surrender was his safest course of action.


	7. Chapter 7

"A wanted criminal!" Sala ("Sal" to her friends) exclaimed in surprise when she finally received an answer to her increasingly strident questions concerning what the ruckus involving her home and her paying guest was all about.

"A suspect," Galf said, trying to be fair, "one who's looking more and more suspicious all the time. There's questions about a break-in and theft in Zema that need to be answered."

"Well, never let it be said that Sala Holcomb doesn't cooperate in bringing criminals to justice."

"We appreciate it, ma'am, and I apologize for brushing past you before, when I first went charging in. Do you mind if we have a look through this fellow's stuff?"

Sal snorted and planted her fists on her broad hips.

"For all I care, you can throw it into the sea. I'll not be having it in my house!" She shot the now-trussed prisoner a look of utter contempt.

"Why don't you go and bring it out, Alys, so this good woman can be rid of his memory?"

Such was an apprentice's job, to handle the fetch-and-carry.

"What did he call himself?" Alys asked Sal as the villager showed her to the guest room.

"Derek Keith."

"Probably made-up, but it's at least better than calling him 'hey, you' all the way back to Zema."

The guest room was plain and simple. Alys picked up one travel pack, loaded and ready to go, as well as a black cloak, then made a quick search of the room in case Derek had cached anything. She doubted he had, since the ability to make a quick exit would be his highest priority, but she made the check anyway, figuring it was better to be thorough than wrong. As expected, nothing turned up, so she rejoined Galf. He'd bound the prisoner's wrists and kept Derek seated on the hard-packed earth.

"Is that it?"

"Our boy travels light."

"So I see. Let's have a look."

Alys set down the pack and opened it up.

"Water flask, dried meat, dried fruit--Galf, he must be guilty; a man who likes cactus rind is twisted enough to do anything."

"Don't try to be funny," replied Galf, who was quite fond of them as a snack. "What else is in there?"

"A compass, a change of clothes, a dose of poison antidote, a dose of monomate. Nothing exciting there. A couple of freaky metal-banded gloves." She tossed them on the stack. "That's it--except, of course, for whatever we find in the false bottom."

Thieves' tools could be expensive, so those that were reusable wouldn't be just thrown away after a job. It wasn't cost-effective, and men like Derek were past masters of the meseta value. Still, he couldn't carry his apparatus on his person, in case he was stopped and questioned by the occasionally draconian representatives of the local law, who took a dim view of a person carrying lockpicks and other devices of that ilk even if they didn't have any specific crime to suspect him of committing.

Not having any reason to figure out which ties and flaps went where, Alys sidestepped the whole process by simply cutting the hidden compartment open. Inside she found a small leather packet of lockpicks, an unusual device which had a titanium-tipped cutting chisel attached to a suction cup by a ball joint, a ceramic vial containing some kind of liquid, a four-inch blowpipe with a folded cloth packet containing wooden darts, and a pouch that like the gloves was covered in metal strips. This last item contained some round, hard object. Alys looked back and forth from the stack to the weapons Galf had found on the prisoner--a collapsible climbing pole, the two knives he'd fought with, another boot dagger, and a small blade concealed in his belt--and commented dryly, "Nice toys."

"You have to respect a man who comes prepared."

"I don't." Sometimes she found Galf's ironic sense of humor a bit trying. "Any idea what these are for?" she asked, holding up the gauntlets. "Clunky armored gloves really don't go with the whole stealth-and-subtlety routine."

"Care to make yourself useful and fill us in?" Galf asked Derek. The only answer he received was a glower. "Didn't think so. Toss one here, will you, Alys?"

He caught the glove neatly and began to glance it over, while Alys did the same to the other one. There was an odd greenish sheen to the metal, noticeable even in twilight, but she didn't know what, if anything, that meant.

Luckily, she wasn't the only Hunter on the case.

"Got it. The plating is zirconium."

"I don't recognize the reference."

"It's an anti-heat metal that was used in the old days, as in the pre-Great Collapse old days. I think its principal source was Parma, so we don't see it so much any more. Kinda hard to carry on full-scale mining operations once the planet blows up."

"Anti-heat metal? Isn't that kind of a contradiction in terms? I thought metal conducted heat very well." A little scientific knowledge could be a dangerous thing.

"Not this stuff. It's supposed to take forever to heat up. Just the thing for a shield when taking on a fire-breathing dragon, not that there are any left. Now, if you're asking me why that _is_, you'll be waiting a long time for an answer. Chemistry ain't precisely my strong suit."

"I don't think it really matters."

"Probably not. What's more important is that a pair of anti-heat gloves could be quite useful to a guy going around setting off fireblasts."

"Yeah, it could. And hey, this pouch, is it covered with the same stuff?" She picked it up and tossed it over.

"Looks like it, and that would be what we in the hunter business refer to as a clue."

He slipped his hand into one of the zirc-gaunts, then scowled as it got stuck.

"Blast it; my hand's too big, and metal gloves don't have a lot of give to them. You'll have to do it, Alys."

He gave her back the gauntlets and pouch. Putting on the heat resistant gear, she opened the pouch and drew out a single glowing jewel between her first two fingers and thumb. The gem was the right size to match up with the one missing from Cross's weapons-case, although Alys was fairly sure it hadn't glowed a radiant orange or cast off heat in palpable waves when it had been a part of their client's collection. If she'd tried to hold it without the gloves, she'd have burnt her fingers. How long, she thought, did it take to heat up the pouch, despite its zirconium lining inside and out? Did Derek have to remove the gem every so often to let the container cool? She put it back away and stripped off the gauntlets.

"Well, that clinches the theft case, at least." Galf turned to Derek. "Now, I think, it's time for you to fill in some answers. I want to know what your game is and who you're playing it for."

"I bet you would," chuckled the thief. "I'd like a few hundred thousand meseta and a retirement home in Termi, but I'm not likely to get those, either."

"If I was in your place, friend, I wouldn't take that tone."

"Oh, please. I'd think that someone skilled enough to catch me would be able to deduce that as a professional I would hardly reveal the name of my client."

Galf managed to pack more derision into his snort than Alys would have believed possible.

"Spare me. Just spare me the code of honor drek, would you? I can barely stomach it from priests and healers and people who actually have holy and noble callings. You, on the other hand, are a criminal who makes a living taking that do not belong to you and selling them to other people. Maybe you're good at it and maybe you take some pride in that, but honor? Professional standards? The ethics of a master craftsman towards his art? That's a load of crawler dung and you know it, you greedy pustule on society's rump."

Alys had never known Galf could be so...expressive.

"Besides," she contributed, "it's not like we don't already know what happened. We're really more interested in the who."

"Y-you can't," Derek blustered. "You couldn't possibly know. No one could."

Alys and Galf shared a look of pity for the ignorant.

"Do you want to tell him?"

"Nah, you go ahead, Alys. Maybe it'll loosen him up if it comes from you."

It looked like it was time for another round of test-the-apprentice. Still, Alys was ready for this one.

Unfortunately, she never got the chance.

The newcomer arrived as if out of nowhere, which was a nice trick for someone wearing a bright white mantle even in the gathering twilight.

"So, I've finally caught up with you," the man snapped, instantly commanding everyone's attention. His voice had the ring of authority to it, not the faintly blustering kind of someone trying to demand respect or of an actor playing a king on the stage but the assurance of someone whose orders had been obeyed in the past and who expected them to be obeyed in the future. Three heads swiveled in the voice's direction.

"What the--?" was Alys's brilliant comment.

"Surrender now, and I'll be lenient with you."

The stranger, Alys decided, was one of those people who _looked_ like they'd have an attitude. He was easily as tall as Galf, perhaps even taller, but very slender; his hair was light blue, pulled back into a ponytail that he wore forward across one shoulder, and he had a handsome face of the almost-pretty kind that probably got him beat up a lot when he was a little kid. In about three years or so he'd have the kind of pristine, ageless beauty that a fair number of women would kill for, but he looked to now be around nineteen or so, and the arrogance of youth was still in his face. _Kind of like Bain, _Alys thought, _only prettier._

"I don't know who you think you are," she shot back, "but if you think we're just going to whatever the heck you say for no good reason then you're as dumb as your dialogue."

"Easy does it, Alys," Galf cautioned her. To the stranger he called out, "Hey, how about we--"

The stranger, though, wasn't any more interested in talk than Alys was. He thrust his right hand out in a commanding, if slightly theatrical gesture.

"_Hewn!_" he cried, interrupting Galf.

Two swirling microbursts of wind spun themselves out of the air, striking the torsos of the two hunters with enough impact to knock them sprawling. The pouch with the stolen jewel slipped from between Alys's fingers as she hit the ground.

The stranger pointed and again employed a technique that Alys had neither seen nor heard of before then.

"_Flaeli!_"

A stream of flame arced out from his finger and sliced through the cord around Derek's wrists with a minute precision that Alys knew from practice was a lot harder to achieve than it looked. The stranger not only knew fancy techniques that had unusual or varying effects, but he was actually good at using them, an entirely different matter.

She'd never fought a tech-user before; although her training had anticipated the possibility there was a world of difference between the practice ground and actual combat. Still, she remembered the first lesson right away, which was to keep moving. Against an enemy with ranged attacks, a stationary fighter was a dead fighter. Alys rolled to her feet, yanked out her slashers, and snapped the blades open. To her left, Galf had also regained his feet and drawn his sword. Alys hurled both slashers at once and followed them in, charging the stranger.

The tech-user displayed better combat reflexes than his demeanor and appearance had suggested by jumping back out of the way of one slasher and quickly snapping up a sturdy wood cane to deflect the second. Alys caught the first slasher in mid-charge but let the other go because the parry had knocked its trajectory too far off to recover.

She was almost on top of the blue-haired man by then; dealing with the slashers had occupied her opponent for long enough that he couldn't gather his energies for a powerful technique. Quick and simple, though, appeared to be part of his repertoire because he brought his hand up to guide another tech. Alys caught the word on his lips and threw herself flat immediately.

"WAT!"

It was lucky she had dived, for the chilling blast the tech-user had called up sang just over her head to dissipate harmlessly in the evening air. Prone at the man's feet like a groveling supplicant, Alys spun on her belly in the dust, using her feet like a whip to hook the stranger's ankle and pull his legs out from under him.

As the blue-haired man fell, Galf dropped his sword (no doubt working on the dead-men-tell-no-tales principle) and sprang. One big hand closed over the stranger's mouth to stifle any more techniques while the other locked on his wrist in a crushing grip. The tech-user, though, displayed a quick reaction time and ruthless perception that was surprising in someone who did his principal fighting with mystic power. He kneed Galf in the groin and jerked free.

Ignoring the pain, the hunter crashed his forearm into the tech-user's face, knocking him back to the ground.

The fight was interrupted by a roaring crackle in the air, a sound like rolling thunder, only softer, closer at hand, and more enduring. Alys, Galf, and the blue-haired stranger all put their immediate concerns aside and turned to look.

As might be expected, once freed Derek had taken action, but surprisingly that action had not been to run away. Instead he had donned the gauntlets and, from the orange glow that made a nimbus around his right fist, had recovered the gem. His attitude was almost prayerful: head bowed, eyes closed, glowing hand pressed to his heart. Tiny surges of energy, sparkling bolts of azure and crimson fire, cracked and discharged in the area around the thief, creating the strange noise.

"Damn," muttered the stranger. "I had it all backward."

Before any of the others could react, Derek's eyes snapped open, revealing pools of glowing orange light. He thrust his fist skyward and screamed defiantly.

"NEIRYUKA!"

The outline of Derek's body shimmered and vanished, and in his wake a thunderous explosion ripped through the area, once more sending Alys, Galf, and the tech-user sprawling.

Groggily, Alys got to her feet, holding her aching head.

"What in the name of all that's sacred was _that_?" Galf groaned, pulling himself back together.

"That," snapped the blue-haired man, "was why you should stay out of things that don't concern you." He seemed less affected by the blast than the hunters, no surprise given its mystic origin and his evident affinity with techniques.

"Which reminds me," Alys growled. "We have some unfinished business."

The stranger quickly held up his hand, palm out in what looked like a pacifying gesture--though of course it could also be the precursor to fiery death.

"I admit that I jumped in too quickly. I saw you holding the crystal and assumed that you were the ones who had used it."

"So you attacked us and freed the real villain of the piece because you got the sides reversed?" Galf verified.

"That's right," the stranger admitted, brushing some of the dust off before recovering his cane. "That's what happens, though, when you meddle in affairs that are not your concern."

"We're being paid for this particular meddling; we're hunters from the Guild."

"Hunters?" the tech-user snorted. "Go fight mini worms then; that's more your kind of work."

"The way I see it," Alys snapped back, her temper flaring, "we were the ones who'd captured Derek, until you showed up, set him free, and gave him back that crystal of his."

He snarled right back at her.

"Keep your noses out of this," he repeated. "This is far beyond your petty Hunter's Guild problems. Dangerous forces are at work here, and I can't do what I need to do with unexpected obstacles interrupting me." He spun on his heel, his mantle swirling around him, and stalked off down the beach into the gathering darkness.

"He called us," Alys noted, "unexpected obstacles."

"Nice exit, though."

"Why don't we go after him? He obviously knows much more about this than we do."

"Picking fights with powerful tech-users is a good way to get your family squabbling over the terms of your will."

Alys expressed her opinion in terms appropriate to their sailors' village location, but of course Galf was right, especially if he felt as sore and battered as she did after the explosion.

"That doesn't mean we're quitting, does it?"

"Of course not. Just that we're not going to bother making that clear to our hotheaded friend. Yet."

Despite everything that happened, Alys couldn't help but grin.

"Yet," she agreed.


	8. Chapter 8

Water splashed against the side of the boat. They were nearing land, and there was a steady flow of waves. Alys lay back against the gunwales and let the rhythmic rocking fill her with a sense of relaxation. Rest was, after all, best taken where one found it, and a sea trip to Vahal Island was definitely best used for reserving strength.

Their destination had been simple enough to choose. Derek had originally wanted to go to Valhalla, and "Neiryuka" was close enough to Ryuka that Alys figured he'd just taken a teleportation shortcut. Of course, there was always the chance the thief had always intended to teleport out to some other location but left the Valhalla clue as a red herring for pursuers, but that would have been overcomplicating things–and Derek not taking the boat would have negated the clue's worth as a decoy anyway. No, Valhalla was it, she and Galf had agreed.

The scar-faced boatman who'd been going to take Derek over had agreed to the change of passengers. He'd even accepted half price, since Galf and Alys were hunters on legitimate business rather than a crook negotiating on a "no questions asked" basis. The man's name had turned out to be Every and his boat, the _Dart_, was a trim little craft that had made the crossing in good time despite his passengers' near-complete lack of nautical skill.

"So you've never been to Valhalla, Galf?" Alys repeated. It had surprised her when he'd announced they couldn't follow by telepipe, because it was the first time since she'd met him that they'd encountered anywhere the veteran hunter hadn't been.

"Nope. Never been there, never wanted to go there, never had any reason until now to change my mind. You might have noticed I'm not exactly the best sailor."

"Now, don't sell yourself short," Every called from his place at the tiller. "You may have been green about the gills since we set sail, but you only lost your breakfast the once, which is more than I can say for most seasick lubbers."

"That's the matchless courage of Galf the Thunder Sword," teased Alys, who'd of course been completely unaffected by the _Dart_'s motion.

"Do you have an apprentice, Every?" Galf groaned.

"No, but a couple of my brother's boys help me out on the nets when we go out after fish. Family's even worse; they don't even pretend to respect you."

"Good; you can sympathize, then. You can help me throw her overboard if I'm too seasick to do it."

Alys stuck her tongue out at him.

"You do know what we can expect when we get there, right?"

Galf shrugged.

"Pretty much. Valhalla started out as a pirate base from which to attack northern sea lanes and launch raids. Since no town has any kind of organized navy, piracy has always been a problem."

"That's what my father always said. At least with the land-bound bandits there would be the town guard and local militias, plus the Hunter's Guild, to help the merchants deal with the problem." She and Galf shared a look, both thinking of the highwaymen's attack on the Brangwin family's last caravan and Galf's rescue of Alys.

"Well, over time it just sort of grew," Galf continued describing the history of Valhalla, getting them past the uncomfortable moment. "Captains of more pirates started using the harbor, and permanent services started opening up shops on shore--taverns, sailmakers, shipwrights, weaponers, brothels, whatever was needed to resupply the ships and amuse the crews. Less-than-scrupulous traders opened up shop to get their hands on pirate loot and have it smuggled ashore for resale. Eventually it just got big enough that it was a legitimate town. The honest business outnumbers the pirate trade these days, I hear, but Valhalla is still a hive of crime. They'll turn a blind eye to any pirate that doesn't prey on Valhallan ships or trade, and there's very little in the way of formal law."

"So the authorities aren't going to be too concerned about a man who committed a crime in Zema," Alys concluded.

"Nope."

"'Course, that cuts both ways," Every pointed out. "It also means no one's going to care very much if a couple of hunters grab a wanted man and haul him home without taking too much care to observe the legal formalities."

The scar-faced boatman steered the _Dart_ in towards the harbor. The sprawl of houses and shops along the waterfront came into view, steadily becoming distinguishable as individual buildings among the mass.

"How odd," Alys remarked. "It seems different, somehow, than most towns. Or is that just because I'm aware of its reputation and being tricked by my mind?"

"It's 'cause it's spread out," Galf said. "Most towns this size are walled, and even villages tend to be clustered together, close to the communal well." Krup, a lakeside village set on several islets as well as the mainland, was probably the most similar place Alys could think of. The strong smells of tar and fish, supported by the ordinary odors of any town, began to mingle in the hunters' nostrils with the salt of the sea.

The boat drew up to one of several short piers and Alys helped Every tie it up alongside.

"You've got two days," the boatman said. "After that, I'll have to cast off for the mainland."

"I can't say how long we're going to be," Galf said. "If you have to wait longer, we could increase your fee for your time."

Every shook his head.

"Sorry, Galf. It ain't that your money isn't good, but I've got to get back to do my bit for my family, crew, and village."

"Ah, I understand. Okay, then, if we have to stay any longer we'll find our own way back. I'm sure there's a telepipe for sale somewhere in Valhalla."

If anyone had anything more to say, they were interrupted by the clumping of heavy boots as a man strolled out to the end of the dock. He wore a green tunic and black leggings, and had a black scarf tied around his head marked with the death's-head device Argus had talked about. He was grinning beneath his drooping moustache, though Alys wished he wasn't quite so happy as his smile showed off his lack of respect for basic dental hygiene.

"Good day ter ya, an' welcome ter Valhalla," he addressed them. "This do be a fine-lookin' vessel, an' right glad I am ter sees it tied up ter the dock. Especially seein's as how I be the excise man."

He tapped the buckle of his weapon-laden belt; it was copper and bore the same seal as the scarf, only the skull was facing to the left. Alys glanced questioningly at Every.

"Oh, yes," the fisherman said, not bothering to be subtle. "The copper buckle is what passes for a guard's uniform around here."

Alys remembered how Galf had called the skull headband an "unofficial" insignia of the Valhalla militia. The buckle, then, was the sign of the _official_ law.

"Now that yer have established me bona fides," the excise man went on, "we be havin' two payment plans concernin' the dockin' fees, as best suits yer convenience. Yer kin pay a fee o' twenty-five mesetas fer tyin' up an registerin' yer boat, yer port o' origin, an yer cargo--which in this case do seems ter be yer passengers. Or"--his smile grew a bit wider--"if yer prefers, there be our deluxe service at a cost o' one hundred mesetas."

"Just what does this 'deluxe' service consist of?"

"Why, lass, fer such honored guests o' this fair town, it'd be rude fer me ter be askin' a lot o' pryin' questions about names and cargoes, now wouldn't it?"

Oh. She should have known.

"Well, that's nice, but we--" Alys began, but Galf cut her off.

"We'll be glad to take advantage of your deluxe service," he said, and fished a handful of twenty-meseta pieces out of his money pouch.

"Thanks yer kindly, an' enjoy yer stay in Valhalla." The guard pocketed the money and strolled off, whistling tunelessly. Galf glowered at Alys, then climbed the wooden ladder built into the pier up to the top of the dock. She followed, still confused.

"Alys, I'm glad you're bright and confident, but for sands' sake when in doubt let me do the talking. You're not a full-fledged partner yet."

"Sorry, Galf. I'll try to wait for my cue next time."

"See that you do. I'm glad to see you've got an independent mind, 'cause you'll never make a hunter without it, but you still ought to follow my lead--especially when you're about to do the wrong thing."

Their boots clunked on the weathered planking as they walked down the pier.

"Why was it the wrong thing, Galf? We're not smugglers or fugitives; we're on legitimate business. Why throw away seventy-five good meseta for nothing?"

"'Cause it isn't for nothing. Derek's bound to suspect we're coming after him, presuming he's not an idiot, and if he sees the name of the boat he originally hired in the town's port records, he's going to get a tad suspicious, I figure. Not to mention that we were pretty free with our names when we had him trussed up. Now, if his ear's to the ground he'll find us soon enough, but I say why give him a head start?"

"That sounds...sneaky."

The veteran hunter grinned at her.

"That's the fun of a bounty-hunting job. You get to do a whole different kind of hunting. The principle isn't anything new to you, though. Think of it like approaching a monster from downwind so it can't smell you coming. We just have to suit our methods to the senses our quarry uses to try spotting us."

Alys nodded, following her mentor's logic. A good hunter had to adapt her approach to the job, be flexible. Which in turn was why Galf kept insisting she learn as much as possible, both in varied combat styles and in general knowledge. If her only tool was a shovel, she could only take jobs digging holes.

"So what's our next step?"

"You tell me. Tell me what you see."

_Another little test._

"Interesting local color," Alys said sardonically, with a nod towards where a drunk lay sprawled in the middle of the wharfside path. Passerby ignored him; the kinder or more fastidious ones stepped around the body while others just stomped on through, somehow not sprawling over the drunk or crushing him underfoot.

"Alys."

"Sorry." She paused, looking at the crowd. "We don't stick out. There's people from a dozen different towns. Most look like sailors, but plenty aren't. There's even a number of native Motavians, more than you usually see in Parmanian towns."

"Most of them are outcasts. It's a common punishment for criminals who are repeat offenders in Motavian society. They get cut off from that society, from family--not to mention their victims--and have to make their way in the world alone."

"So the Motavians here are all criminals?" she said with distaste.

"Not necessarily. Remember that native culture isn't the same as ours. They have taboos against things we wouldn't blink at, and some things that are crimes in Parmanian towns aren't among Motavians. And some of the people might be families of the outcasts--a spouse that loves the exile enough to join him or her, or perhaps the family was made responsible for keeping one criminal member on the straight and narrow and failed."

"Wait--so they'd exile a whole family for one person's crimes? That's horrible!"

"Like I said, our customs are different. Community is important to native Motavians. Basically it's the family's duty to teach its members right. If one turns into a habitual criminal, the family didn't do its job."

Alys considered that, and thought about how many times a Parmanian criminal had family issues. The natives might have had a point, in certain cases.

"Don't get distracted, though," Galf recalled her mind to the job at hand.

"Right. We pick a dockside inn because if we stay in town we'll stick out as strangers, but on the harbor we're just two more visitors. Since we look reasonably prosperous, we take one of the better ones, on the same principle. The less attention we draw to ourselves, the better chance we have of finding Derek before he finds us. And maybe we also skip the middleman and look for the crazy one with green hair Argus mentioned. He's more likely to be important, anyway."

"Good!" Galf said, giving her a clap on the shoulder. "Right on all counts, especially the last bit. What's your reasoning, by the way?"

"Just having the right answer isn't enough, hey? Well, we're assuming the daggers were sold to Preston Cross to get that one gem into the weapons-room, in proximity to the Fire Staff. The jewel sucked the power out of the staff, and Derek stole it back. Both the seller and the thief are linked to the gem's creator, but Derek is an expert professional, making it more likely he's hired talent and not central to the business."

"All true. You missed one point, though."

"Oh?" Alys said, a bit miffed.

"Derek used that Neiryuka technique on the beach. Assuming that a magic-sucking gem and a new technique are connected, he has to be at least part of the scheme, not purely hired help."

"Blast! I should have figured that."

"Otherwise, your reasoning was good. We just need to put it into action. The good news is, if Derek's not just a hired hand, then he's probably still in town even though he was days ahead of us."

"And if he's in town," Alys added, "then we'll find him. I know there's a lot of fishing boats in this job, but I don't want to bring back a 'one that got away' story."


	9. Chapter 9

In an ordinary bounty-hunting case where the hunters were after a criminal, Galf explained, the usual procedure would be to consult the local law if there wasn't a specific plan of action. A person's name might be known, or some underworld hangout might be considered. Local guards were usually glad to cooperate because it meant one of their town's problems would be taken care of at somebody else's risk and expense. In Valhalla, however, this obviously did not apply. The local attitude was, if one didn't commit the crime _in_ Valhalla, it was none of anyone's official business.

"In fact, if we get too pushy, odds are its us who'll end up in a cell for disturbing the peace. Of course, that's nothing now, since a hunter can't just bust heads and push innocent people around in any town, but at least we usually get some leniency. The upside is that if we keep our quarrels away from third parties, Derek and our private business will stay our private business. I figure the law around here isn't too nosy when it doesn't have to be."

Alys shook her head. Rules she could handle, and anarchy could be dealt with, but Valhalla seemed to be some of each.

They'd taken rooms at the Sailor's Surprise, whose sign showed a drunken pirate leering at the improbable figure of an elmelew in a pink dress. The Surprise was an inn only, without a taproom, but the innkeeper recommended them to the Blue Ruin for all the drink, carousing, and gambling they could stomach.

"Sounds like just our speed," Galf had told the woman, and that was exactly where they went that evening.

"What's the plan?"

"Keep your eyes and ears open, don't drink too much, and don't flirt. We'll end up in a brawl for sure if you do."

"I don't flirt," Alys snapped.

"I'm thinking friend Every would disagree. He told me the darts story."

Alys blushed.

"Right. No flirting."

If there was one thing Alys could not understand, it was gambling. The click of dice and slap of cards on wooden tables held no allure for her, and the whirr of spinners and the dazzle of turning wheels did not attract her eyes. The concept of taking one's hard-earned money and risking it on a game of chance was totally alien to her. Simple math would tell anyone that the odds were with the house, or in a person-to-person game with the professional gamesharp who knew the odds and had learned to read his or her opponent's expression and movements for clues to further shift the chances of winning.

A game of skill was a different story, of course. But betting on blind luck, risking wealth that an unlikely outcome would occur, that had no attraction at all. Still, a job was a job, and so Alys found herself with a mug of ale (no question of where she fell on the adult/child scale in Valhalla) at a table with six other people who seemed to share none of her objections. Ironically, having reasonable luck and working through one drink in the time the others took for three or four (and some of those rum) she made a head start on recouping their expenses from the trip.

Little else of note happened for the first hour, not even any serious cursing by the losers over their bad luck. Then one burly woman cast the dice and came up a loser, when suddenly the entire room started to shake. Drinks sloshed, bottles rattled behind the bar, and the dice jumped enough so that one of the roller's sixes flopped over to become a three.

"Ha!" she cried. "I win after all!"

"What're you talking about, Maud?" challenged a weedy man with leathery skin. "You rolled three sixes up. Pay over!"

"I'm counting two sixes from here, Jakk. Count 'em yerself."

"But that ain't what you rolled!"

"No one touched the dice or the table, and the bets weren't paid out yet."

"Yeah, but you can't win 'cause an earthquake changed the dice," another player pitched in.

"Why not?" argued one of Maud's shipmates. "We do if it's a wave at sea. This is just a wave on land!"

"So who's ever heard of earthquakes in Valhalla?" one of the challengers yelled back.

"Whattya mean? We've been getting them a couple times a day for the past three months!"

Alys eased herself back from the table as the shouting began to intensify. If a fight broke out, she didn't want to be part of it. Her back connected with another person and she turned to apologize, only to find Galf standing over her.

"Time to go."

"But I haven't learned anything."

"I have. Besides, you won't learn anything in the middle of a brawl."

Alys followed Galf's lead out of the Blue Ruin and onto the street.

"What did you find out?" she asked.

"The name of a fence, one of the biggest ones in town. If Derek is a Valhallan, she'll know him and probably how to find him." Suddenly he stopped and grabbed Alys's arm. "Wait a second!"

"What is it?"

"There."

He pointed, and Alys saw it too, a tall, lean man in a white hooded mantle just outside one of the inns. Even though his hood was down, she could only tell that the hair color was light, but she'd be willing to be that in a decently lit area it would show as pale blue.

"He's here," Alys murmured. "How is he here?"

"How was he on the beach?"

Good point, she thought.

"I think," Galf continued, "that we ought to try answering some of those questions."

"How? He made it clear he didn't want to see us again, and seeing as how he was pretty much wiping the floor with us--"

"That's why we aren't going to ask. We're going to follow our friend in the white mantle and let him show us what he knows. The fence can wait."

As towns went, Valhalla proved to be almost perfect for following someone. The houses were laid out in no particular scheme or pattern and there were no street lamps, so that hiding spots were plentiful, and on the larger streets there were still plenty of people around despite the late hour. Obviously, Valhallan sailors caroused hard when their feet touched land. The tech-user's white mantle was as good as a beacon; he was more than easy to follow. Indeed, he didn't even seem to be looking around to see if anyone _was_ following, but striding briskly along with clear purpose. He only stopped when two large men stepped out in his path.

"That's far enough there, pally," one barked. "You've been sticking your pretty nose where it doesn't belong."

"You don't want to be doing this," the tech-user snapped scornfully. "Get out of my way."

"Now you see, that's where you're wrong." The man drew a long knife with a serrated blade.

"They really don't want to be doing that," Alys agreed.

"Not alone, no," Galf told her, "but they aren't."

A moment later Galf was proven correct as the alleys to the tech-user's left and right disgorged two additional men each. Alys was mildly annoyed with herself for not noticing the additional ambushers, even though they hadn't been stalking _her_.

"Get him, boys!" barked the lead thug. The blue-haired man had clearly not been wasting his time, but had been gathering his mental reserves while the goons were making their dramatic entrance. He raised his hand.

"_Hewn!_"

The wind technique struck all six of his enemies at once, swirling drills of air surging into them. Three went sprawling and a fourth bounced off a wall. The others, though, were not immediately stunned, and they lunged at him. Again, the tech-user showed decent combat skills, parrying the leader's knife with his wood cane, but the last man brought a sturdy club down on the side of his skull.

"Looks like that's our cue," Galf muttered as the tech-user went down. He led the charge with Alys on his heels, and bellowed out a challenge to take the leader's attention off stabbing the downed man. He barely got his dagger up to block Galf's sword, but the initial charge drove him several steps back from his prey.

Alys threw a slasher on the run, slicing a deep cut into the chest of the club-wielding thug. The man who'd hit the building was coming back at her, though, blades out while she was empty-handed. The only sensible defense seemed to be a quick technique, so she unleashed a Foi, hoping the fireblast would knock the man over and possibly out.

What she got, instead, was a deafening explosion of flame that knocked Alys _herself _over backwards. Her attacker, though, had been reduced to Murderous Goon Flambe, extra-blackened, while the other thug on his side, who'd just been getting up from the Hewn, was more of a medium-rare.

The surviving members of the rat-pack reacted with loud and colorful obscenities, then made a break for it. Galf would have given chase and probably grabbed the leader for questioning, but he'd been as shocked as anyone. Probably more than the thugs, because he knew darned well that Alys didn't have the ability to cast a technique that powerful.

Then again, _no one_ had the ability to cast a Foi technique that powerful. Even a true techmaster's Foi didn't cause exploding fireballs; that was why there were Gi and Na versions of the technique.

The white-mantled tech-user, his previously immaculate outfit now stained with mud and soot, glared at Alys while rubbing his aching head.

"Now do you believe me when I say this doesn't concern you?"


	10. Chapter 10

"Attitude aside," Galf said, "I'd say it's time we compared notes."

"I've told you, this is--"

"Yeah, we've heard you say all those things before, and they're just as stupid now."

The blue-haired man glared at him.

"I don't appreciate interference in my business," he snapped angrily.

"You'd rather we let the rat pack kill you?" Galf jerked his thumb at one of the fallen thugs.

"And let's not forget your great job on the beach, rescuing the bad guy from us," Alys chimed in.

The tech-user looked from one hunter to the other, then down to the dead man.

"All right, then. If you've come this far, you aren't going to go away quietly, so I'd might as well tell you some of what's going on so I'm not tripping over you every time I turn around."

"How gracious."

No one seemed interested in calling in the law to deal with the bodies.

The tech-user took them back to his inn room, which was as private a place to talk as any. He refused to say anything until they reached it, which annoyed Alys to no end, but she saw the reason for it.

"First things first," he declared once the door was closed and locked. "My name is Rune Walsh."

"Charmed, I'm sure," Galf said, then provided his name and Alys's. "We're from the Guild, as you know."

"Then it's money behind your persistence."

"That, plus professional pride. If a hunter takes a job, they'd better do that job, or at least give it their best in trying. Warnings from strangers with no authority and no facts to back up the words won't cut it."

"I see. Obviously I underestimated the two of you. I should have known better, since you'd caught the holder of the stone." Alys figured that was as close to an apology as they'd get from Rune.

"So you know what the stolen crystal is?" she asked.

"I do. It's a Cormar Stone. It has the power to absorb and store magic for later release."

"That tallies with what we know," said Galf.

"Blast it! If the two of you know that much, the facts could get out generally."

"Hey, we hunters don't go around telling everyone about the details of our cases."

"He didn't mean us, Alys. We've figured things out, and that means other people could do the same if they got to see the same evidence. I've got to agree with Rune on this one, besides. It's bad enough rival tech-users are fighting over this stone and the power it's got. Adding anyone else into the mix is just asking for trouble."

"And you wonder why I wanted you out of this?" Rune said.

"The difference is that it's our business to be involved. We're not in this for ourselves but to do a legitimate job. _We_ aren't in it for power."

"Neither am I," Rune said flatly.

"Really?" Galf asked. "A technique user who has mastered at least two techs I've never heard of?"

"That isn't the point."

"Why not?"

Rune made a sound that was somewhere between a tongue-cluck and a growl.

"Look, just take it slowly and use small words," Alys said. She knew that look. It was the same one that Galf got when he was trying to explain something to her and she just wasn't getting it.

"Deep breaths, boy," Galf added.

"All right. The simple answer? You remember what happened when Alys used Foi in the alley? Large explosion all out of proportion to the power of the technique? I'm trying to prevent that from happening."

"Is that why your techniques didn't get out of control?"

"Not quite, Galf, but it _is_ why I chose to use powers that wouldn't react to the fragmented energies."

"Fragmented energies," Alys mused. "I guess it's time for us to suck it up and let you switch to big words."

"Yeah, I'd say so," agreed Galf.

"At least you're both technique users, so you have a head start on understanding this. There is a kind of energy, or maybe energy is a bad word for it, so I'll call it a 'power' for lack of anything useful. It exists throughout the Algo system, in the air and the water, in the earth and in the spaces between the planets. It apparently doesn't exist outside of Algo."

_How the devil does he know that?_ Alys thought.

"This power is what fuels techniques. When you use a technique, your mind reaches out, gathers in some of the power from the environment around you, and shapes it into an effect which reacts in the physical world. People's minds are different, offering access to more or fewer techniques and to different kinds of techniques. More precisely, heredity seems to determine the extent of one's technique aptitude, while psychology governs the precise types of techniques accessible. Training and practice is necessary to bring forth the potential, because techniques are a _system_ of manipulating power. Concentrate in _this_ way, say _this_ word and _this_ effect happens."

"Do you know, I actually followed that," Galf murmured.

"Will wonders never cease. You're a swordsman. Can you airslash?" This was a sword skill by which a master could send a cutting wave out through the air with a sweep of the sword. Alys had seen her mentor perform it more than once.

"Yes."

"Ever wonder where the power comes from? You're not actually cutting the air with the edge of your sword, after all."

Galf scratched at his beard.

"Never worried about that, really. If it works, I'm happy."

Rune groaned.

"I should have guessed. Those skills are rudimentary forms of techniques. Some early practitioners stumbled on a way to use that part of the brain during the sword battle and all of a sudden sword masters were flinging cutting waves around. But I also bet you can't do it a lot, can you? Far less that the amount of techniques you can use without rest?"

Galf nodded.

"That's because of two things. One is that the power comes from _you_, not from the environment around you. You can improve your efficiency with training and practice, but you only have so much to use. The other is that those skills were developed by trial and error. They don't manipulate your power as efficiently as possible."

"Like if I'm lifting a heavy box?" Alys fished for an analogy in terms she could understand. "I can bend from the waist and lift the box, and it'll put a lot of stress on my spine, or I can bend from the knees and not give myself a backache. Bending at the waist will still lift the box using my body, but it's harder on me and I can't do it as often."

"That isn't a bad way of putting it," Rune admitted grudgingly.

"So techniques are like bending at the knees?"

"No, techniques are more like hoisting the box with a block and tackle. You get something outside yourself to do most of the work for you so you only exert yourself slightly."

"Or like if I ask you to pick up the box," Galf told her, grinning. "I work my jaw muscles, while you do the rest."

"Very good," Rune agreed. "You are following this."

"Thank you. So let's take it to the next step. What does this have to do with the Cormar Stone or Stones and what happened to Alys's Foi in the alley?"

"All right, then, imagine, imagine a faucet."

"A what?"

The tech-user snarled angrily, but not at Galf, more an aside to himself.

"No, of course you wouldn't. Imagine a waterfall, then. A very small, gentle one. You could stick a cup in it without any trouble and fill the cup with water. That's what technique use is like. You fill the 'cup' with the power around you, in order to make the technique work. But imagine if you tried to fill the same cup in the waterfall near Birth Valley in Zema. By sticking the cup in the rushing water, you'd splash all over yourself. It's moving too fast to just be caught. Whatever the one using the Cormar Stones is doing, it's disturbing the lattice of power so that it becomes that roaring waterfall. Power leaks into the area any time a technique is used, or even just manifests on its own without a guiding mind."

"Neiryuka," Alys murmured, remembering the detonation on the beach after Derek's escape. "That explosion was just...a side effect of the teleportation?"

"Exactly, and if we had continued our fight, and you or Galf had used a technique, there might have been another incident like the one in the alley."

"No wonder you were so quick to shrug it off."

"No one had used one of the new techniques in the alley, though," Rune said. "That's because there's been so much experimentation with them locally that the lattice is becoming unstable. _Any_ technique use in Valhalla will have those results, namely chaotic, unpredictable, and violent disaster. How long it will take for the power flows to return to normal--or _if_ they'll return to normal--I don't know, but we have to stop the person who's creating and using these Nei techniques _now_, before things get any worse."

"How much worse?" Someone always had to ask that, and Alys was mildly disgusted to find it being herself this time.

"This system lost Parma nearly a thousand years ago. I don't want to see another planet go up on my watch."

"And just why is it your 'watch'?" Galf asked. End-of-the-world hyperbole never fazed him.

"Because I have the power to sense what's happening. I can feel the lattice of power around me and how damaged it is. It's the job of those of us who can identify problems to fix them."

"Wait a second." Galf held up a hand. "You can _feel_ what's wrong with techniques just by sitting there? Who the heck are you, and how is it _your_ techniques work just fine?"

"My 'techniques' aren't techniques at all," Rune responded.

"Skills like my airslash?"

"Vaguely, but Flaeli and Hewn are not merely accidental creations. They are the product of years of study by experts and practitioners in the field to be as efficient and productive as possible. To use Alys's simile, they are the equivalent of bending at the knees. Like techniques they are part of an orderly system, but one crafted to maximize the effects of the power within rather than the power without." He spoke with obvious pride, both in himself and in the design of the skill system that he practiced.

"An orderly system, like techniques, but not? That sounds like--"

"Magic," Rune smugly finished Galf's statement.

"Magic? That was supposed to have vanished a thousand years ago!" Alys exclaimed. "Are you claiming to be..."

If possible, Rune's smile became even more arrogant.

"Of course," he said. "An Esper."


	11. Chapter 11

"An Esper," Alys said flatly. "And would you perhaps be a boon companion of The Heroine Alis Landale, as long as you're telling us fairy tales?"

Rune flinched, apparently upset by her sarcasm.

"Actually, Alys, I believe him."

"Galf?"

He shrugged.

"It fits the facts. He's a powerful tech-user. He has access to a fire technique that isn't Foi and a wind technique that isn't Zan. If he says that these are actually magic, then at least it makes some sense."

"If you say so," Alys responded dubiously. She still wasn't quite sure she believed it, but if Galf went along she could at least give the idea the benefit of the doubt.

And it wasn't like she had any better ideas.

"All right, so now what? Obviously we stop whomever's creating these new techniques--Neiryuka and whatnot--before he or she does enough damage to the magic in the air that major disasters happen. How do we find this tech-user?"

"We follow the stone," said Galf. "That's how we got here. The state of the power flows, or whatever Rune called it, tells us that we're getting closer. Man's gonna test these things out in his workshop, under controlled conditions, right?"

"Exactly. Hence the extreme instability; these Nei techniques have been tested over and over here in Valhalla, in their creator's lab."

"Obviously the power he's sucking up in the stones is important somehow. Maybe he's gotta have it to use these...Nei techs, you called them?"

"Nei is an ancient word of power. The command word of a technique is no accident; it resonates with and assists in shaping the power into an effect. That's part of what Gi and Na techniques are about. The word 'Nei' is too powerful, though, for use in anything as transient and impermanent as a technique. He'd have to be insane not to realize that."

"Well, forgive those of us who aren't Espers from not knowing all about the theory and practice behind technique creation," Alys said waspishly. Know-it-all boy was really starting to get on her nerves. Sure, this clearly was his field and he knew more than the hunters did, but Rune was barely older than she was and he constantly talked down to her. He reminded her of nothing so much as Galf when he was in a cranky mood, one of his "I've been alive for too darn long to have to put up with these idiots" routine. Only, Rune wasn't even twenty if Alys was any judge.

He glared at her, obviously ready to snap back, then stopped and sighed.

"You're right," he admitted.

"I know."

"Now, kids, play nice," Galf said. "The key is Derek. Before we got sidetracked, you might remember that I'd found a good lead to him. Since he's doing the fetch-and-carry for our mysterious tech-user, we find him and we've got a direct line to our Nei-maker."

"That's right!" Alys remembered. "You said you'd found a major fence."

"Her name is Ardath Vine. I'm sure she'll be able to point us in the right direction."

"The loyalty of thieves is as dust in the wind," Rune said, obviously quoting from something Alys had never heard.

"Well, let's just say it tends to be a commodity like any other."

-X X X-

Maybe not quite like any other, Alys considered as they faced Ardath Vine. The woman ran, of all things, a weapon store, though the equipment was pretty much low-grade crap.

"I'm afraid that I have no idea whom you are talking about," she said.

"Why does everybody have to say that?" Galf asked no one in particular. "Why, just once, can't someone answer, 'yes I do know that man and here's what you have to do for me so I'll tell you how to find him'?"

Alys patted her mentor on the shoulder.

"It's just one of life's little annoyances," she said.

"So how is this going to work? Do we try to bribe you with our feeble store of cash?" he asked Ardath. "Do we play the heavies and break things? Do you call a bunch of low-rent thugs out of the back room and we prove our seriousness by kicking their rumps back _into_ said back room? Do we let you have the pretty-boy here for a couple of hours to amuse yourself?"

Alys broke up into a fit of unhunterlike giggles at that one. Rune just sighed and shook his head sadly.

"Please, children," he murmured, "can we focus?"

"I could use Foi again," Alys suggested, "and demonstrate why it's so important that we find Derek...presuming the building is still here."

"Don't joke about that," Rune advised. "Remember that, in fact, it might not be if you tried a damaging technique."

Ardath didn't respond to any of the byplay among the hunters; she merely sat there, watching them with an unchanging expression, pleasantly bemused but hard-eyed. Odd eyes, really, Alys thought; the small, black pinpoints didn't match the plump, friendly face or the gray-streaked purple hair.

Then Alys laughed again.

"Hey, Galf, I don't think we're going to get anything out of her, after all."

Galf arched an eyebrow.

"Oh?"

"Look at her eyes? Familiar, aren't they?"

He did, then paused and grinned broadly.

"Yeah, I can see what you mean. Sorry for wasting your time, ma'am; can't hardly expect a woman to rat out on her own son, now, can I?"

"Have a nice day," she said. "Do come again when you're in a buying mood."

"And what, precisely, did that get us?" Rune snapped once they were outside on the street again.

"Patience isn't really your specialty, is it?" Alys said.

"Let's just say I've spent too many years waiting for people who think they know what they're doing to realize that they don't and get out of the way."

"Children, play nice. Given that the apple apparently doesn't fall far from the tree, professionally speaking, I figure that Ardath wasn't going to give her boy up unless we resorted to torture. I presume nobody here is going to suggest that as an option? Good. So, all we'd be doing in there is wasting our time. There's a lesson there, by the way--"

"'Never waste time beating your head against a wall when you should be finding a way around it.' Yeah, I know."

"Which in this case means, the faster we leave, the faster Ardath can send a message to her son letting him know we're in town, and the faster we can follow the messenger right to Derek." He studied his fingernails, checking for imaginary dirt.

"Is he always this smug when he's right?" Rune asked Alys.

"Pretty much. You learn to live with it."

"Kids," Galf sighed.

-X X X-

The job of following the first man who snuck furtively from the back door of the shop fell to Alys. He was obviously a decoy, but his existence had to be honored just in case it was a double-blind. He led her a merry chase down a tangle of curving streets--apparently Valhallan houses were just thrown up wherever people felt like putting them, making the village's layout extremely strange--for about ten minutes before he ducked into a tavern, popped his feet up on a table, and settled in for some serious drinking.

Well, it was what she expected, she grumbled mentally. She was the low woman on the mission and that meant she got the less important jobs when they split up. She headed back towards Ardath's shop, though, by then Galf and Rune were probably long gone after the real messenger.

_Alys._

"Rune?" she said, surprised and looking around for the tech-user.

_Come to the north end of town, to Vine's Jewelry._

She wasn't hearing his voice, she realized, not out loud. It was like she was thinking it, reciting the words in her mind--only it wasn't her voice or her thoughts, but Rune's!

"What the heck? Rune, can you hear me?"

No response. Apparently not.

_I guess the stuck-up pretty-boy really is an Esper._ It was almost a relief to think the words herself. It was _creepy_ to have someone else thinking in her head. Still, it was a pretty good way to get a message across town. If she hurried, maybe she wouldn't even miss out on any of the action.

It turned out that she didn't. In fact, she was still about a block away when she heard the explosion. Quite a crowd had gathered around Vine's Jewelry (Derek Vine, proprietor, according to the small print on the sign), and no wonder. A ten-by-eight section of the west wall had fallen into the shop, and the roof was sagging desperately. Alys's heart leapt--had Galf been inside? What had happened?

_Alys, come two buildings east._

She turned her head to the right and saw the now-familiar white-mantled figure just visible around a corner. She hurried that way and caught up with Rune.

"Is Galf all right? What's happening?"

"He's fine. We're both fine, thank you."

"I can _see_ you're all right. Where's Galf?"

"Inside here."

He brought her around to the side door of what was apparently an abandoned building. Inside, Galf stood over Derek, who lay bound and gagged on his belly.

"Hey, Alys. I see Rune's Esper trick works," Galf remarked, clearly impressed.

"It's more than a little freaky, but yeah. That would be handy in the field, being able to talk back and forth at a distance, especially if we're out of line-of-sight from each other and can't even use hand signals."

"Unfortunately, the spell only allows messages to be sent," Rune provided, "so you would both have to be Espers--which you are not--for that to work. It is very effective, though, when one does have trained minds working in concert."

"So what happened to the store and how did Derek end up trussed like a roasting goose?"

Galf grinned.

"He thought he'd be sneaky. A couple of minutes after the messenger--a kid of about ten, by the way, and slipperier than an eel--left, the boom goes off. Derek thought he'd use the Hinas technique to teleport to a nearby building and sneak away while we were watching his shop."

"It wasn't a bad plan," Rune grudgingly admitted, "if one ignores the fact that his employer's tampering with techniques turned a quiet little teleport into a very dramatic implosion. Galf realized almost at once what had happened and that this building was the likeliest place for him to teleport to."

Alys nodded.

"I see. It's empty."

"Most folks would kick up a fuss if someone appeared in the middle of their home or ship," Galf agreed. "He was coming out the side door just about when we were going in."

"With predictable results," concluded Rune.

Galf knelt next to the struggling thief. From the small pile of equipment on the floor, it seemed that he had already removed a number of interesting toys Derek could have used to wriggle or cut his way free. He grabbed a fistful of the thief's hair and jerked his head up and back.

"Now you listen to me and listen good, you piece of garbage. I've chased you through three towns, now, which is two more than I like to put up with. I've been in three fights. I've nearly been blown up because of the crap your boss has been pulling with his Nei techniques and what it's doing to everybody else's techs. I have run _out_ of _patience_ with you and with this entire job. You're going to tell me who hired you, where he or she is, and everything you know about what's happening, or else I'm going to start cutting off limbs and we'll see how well your burglary career goes on, say, two peg legs. Now which is it gonna be?"

Derek mumbled something; Galf pulled down the gag.

"You're hunters. You wouldn't do that," he protested.

"I don't suppose you can just rip it out of his head?" Alys asked Rune. The Esper shook his head.

"I'm sorry. I know _how_ to, but I can't actually do it. I need much more training before my mind can use spells of that power."

"Too bad. Guess we do it the hard way."

"Don't make me laugh," Derek sneered. "I know your kind. You don't have the stomach--"

He broke off suddenly because Galf had pressed the point of a knife delicately into the flesh of the thief's lower eyelid.

"Don't I? Any time anyone uses a technique in Valhalla, disasters happen and people probably will die. Every one of those deaths is on your head for helping the techmaster do this. By my figuring, that makes you a mass murderer. I'm betting your friends and neighbors are going to see it the same way, if I explain things."

"I would," Alys agreed, "and I'm not a short-tempered pirate or bandit."

"So let's say that maybe you're right, Derek. Maybe I can't go and cut you to pieces slowly. But I bet there's people in Valhalla who can. If you can't help me finish this job, then you're useless to me, so I can just hand you over to local justice. On the other hand, if you do help me finish the job, then I can get a nice bonus to my commission by keeping you alive and well for trial in Zema, on simple robbery charges. Heck, they're almost a civilized town down there; they don't even hang people for stealing. So if you talk, it's as good as a five-thousand-meseta bribe for me to keep you alive and well. Am I speaking a language you understand, now?"


	12. Chapter 12

"A cave in the hills," Alys groused. "The mad techmaster lurks in a cave in the hills. Could there _be_ anything more cliched?"

"Cliches get started because they're commonly true," Rune pointed out, unconsciously echoing Alys's own thoughts from way back in Zema.

"Mad wizards in caves? Do you Espers have some kind of liking for holes in the ground?"

Rune sighed.

"Actually, I once did live in a cave. Come to think of it, so did my mentor."

Alys chortled.

"Stop laughing! A cave makes perfect sense."

They trudged on. Allegedly, the cave in question was only a day's travel out of town. It would probably be less for the hunters, who were better fit for wilderness travel than an urban resident like Derek. Of course, having to lead the way with hands bound behind him, a rope lead in Galf's hand, also tended to slow up the thief. Rune seemed to have no trouble keeping up, which a small part of Alys found annoying. Anything to shake that supremely arrogant confidence of his!

"Okay, then, enlighten me. What makes a dank pit in the ground so attractive to Espers?"

"First off, there's solitude. If you're involved in magic or techniques research you don't want to be bothered, so you need a private facility. If you're a sane and reasonable person, you also want to stay well away from population, in case of accidents. If, instead, you have paranoid delusions, you also want to stay away from population because you think they're out to get you or whatever. Then there's stability--nice, solid stone construction, not a pile of sticks that falls apart or catches fire."

"That would serve anyone right who wastes wood building a whole house," Alys noted, which drew an odd look from Rune. She couldn't figure why; trees simply were too rare to use in place of stone or brick, and wood too useful for other purposes.

"Anyway," he said, "the third reason is cost. There's no need to buy the land and no need to build the structure since it's been pre-built by nature. When you have chemicals and other reagents to buy, wasting your available capital on your research facility isn't productive."

"All right, then, I admit it. A cave makes perfect sense...for technique-throwing lunatics."

"Why, thank you. I'm glad you've learned something," Rune replied with perfect aplomb.

"Argh!"

Rune broke into a smile and laughed.

"Kids, don't make me come back there," Galf called from up ahead. "Especially since we're here."

The track, barely more than an animal trail, rounded to a corner in the hillside and there it was, a cave mouth seven feet high and four wide.

"Well, it's just as he said, right down to those two scrubby pines to the left of the entrance," Alys remarked. "At least he didn't lead us off chasing the wind."

From the coastal valley below a sharp bang like a particularly close thunderbolt could be heard. It was the fourth time since they'd begun the walk, the fourth technique gone spectacularly wrong in Valhalla.

"How long are things going to be like that around here?" she asked, subdued by the thought of what might have happened, how many people could have been hurt.

"I can't be sure," Rune replied. "If we can stop the techmaster from using any further Nei techniques and making the situation any worse...a decade, maybe? Perhaps two?"

"Valhalla is dead, then," Alys said glumly. "You can't have a town in a place where technique use could result in a catastrophic disaster. As soon as they realize what's happening, they'll leave." She shook her head. "Sometimes it seems like we're losing ground instead of expanding civilization and knowledge."

"You don't know how right you are."

"Are all Espers this enigmatic?"

"It's a special talent."

"All right, then, let's head on in," Galf cut short the debate. He tugged on the rope, pulling Derek stumbling forward. "I'd like to make you lead the way in case there's a nasty surprise waiting inside, but it'd take too much work to keep you under control, especially in a fight."

He pushed the thief against one of the pines and used the lead rope to tie him to the tree.

"Let's go."

Galf led the way, sword drawn. Alys followed with a lit dark-lantern, shining its beam past her mentor to illuminate the way. A slasher was in her other hand, blades unfolded and ready. Rune brought up the rear of the group.

"I don't suppose there's a spell to disarm traps," Alys murmured softly. She didn't whisper, as Galf had taught her that would carry further than a low voice.

"Actually, there is, but I don't know it. We'll just have to be careful."

Their care, it seemed, wasn't necessary. As they proceeded deeper within, they encountered no dug pits, no tripwires or man-traps, no snares of any kind. If this really was the techmaster's lair, Alys thought, he had apparently not bothered to install any mechanical defenses. There seemed to only be one main passage, with short dead-end alcoves and fissures too small for even a child to fit through. The cave was dry, thankfully; a dead cave without sources of moisture was unlikely to be inhabited by monsters, so at least they didn't have to worry about Zol slugs oozing out of a fissure to attack or something equally loathsome.

The human monster was likely to be loathsome enough.

Although unbranching, the passage wasn't straight, and so it wasn't until they came through a pair of S-curves that a glimmer of light could be seen from ahead. Alys immediately shuttered the dark-lantern so its beam wouldn't announce their presence. The result was that she nearly stumbled over the dead man lying in the shadows.

She was a hunter. She'd seen dead bodies before. Not twenty-four hours past, she'd _killed_ people, if only by an accident of the twisted techniques. Nonetheless, falling over a decaying corpse in a dark cave brought a scream to her lips, one she choked off only because Galf's hand clapped over her mouth as he kept her from falling.

"You okay now?" he said after a moment. She nodded, and he let her go.

"Spiky green hair, goatee," he said, assessing the body, which looked--and smelled--about a week dead. Galf didn't mention her sudden fright, which made her profoundly grateful. Nothing made Alys more uncomfortable than talking about her feelings. "Looks like this might be the guy Argus told us about."

"I guess he wasn't the techmaster."

"Just another flunky. Wonder if he got the boss mad or just wound up on the wrong end of one of those accidents?"

They moved on slowly, and after another twenty feet the passage curved gently left into the first large chamber they'd encountered. The peripheral details were basically generic–large wooden tables against the walls with vials of bubbling fluids, scraps of paper, lights of glowing moss so as not to compete with the living for oxygen, walls and floor gouged with ruts no doubt caused by new techniques in development. Alys quickly took in these details and focused on the cave's only occupant.

He...well, actually, he was pretty generic as well. He had bright yellow hair sticking out in all directions. He wore a tattered and stained robe that had once been red, with a broad collar over it bearing three jewels in metal settings, his face had the emaciated look of someone who forgets to eat if not prodded, and his eyes didn't focus all too well. Unfortunately, she could see the eyes all too well because he'd been facing them when they came in, quashing any hope of a sneak attack. To complete the stepped-off-a-children's-book-cover picture, he had a scrubby little chin patch, which this season was apparently the official facial hair of insane evil.

"Intruders!" he screeched. "You won't stop my work!" He thrust his hands towards them, curled like claws, but the hunters were already in motion, Galf breaking to the left and Alys to the right. Alys dropped the lantern and flung her slasher at the same time. Meanwhile, Rune was pointing the tip of his cane at the techmaster.

"NEIDEBAN!" keened the wild-eyed man.

"_Flaeli!_" cried Rune.

One of the gems on the man's collar pulsed with light, and Alys realized that it must be a Cormar Stone. A pulsing blue haze filled the air around him and Alys's slasher bounced off the cloud. Rune's firebolt punched right through it, though, slamming the techmaster to the floor.

_Okay, this follows. Deban is a physical-defense technique, so Neideban just works better,_ Alys thought.

In the next moment, Rune grunted with pain. Alys glanced back and saw him slump to the cave floor. Behind him tottered the green-haired corpse, its fingers still laced together from the clubbing blow it had just delivered.

"Tee-hee-hee-hee," giggled the madman as he struggled to his feet. "Poor Karl was standing too close to a Neiwat. I tried to save his life, but to no avail. Still, he does seem to appreciate the effort I went to, as he still obeys me. I should try my Neires again, once I've killed you, and see if it works

the same! NEIZONDE!"

The electrical blast arced to the point of Galf's sword, the ceramic blade shivering to pieces. Had it been metal, he'd have been dead; as it was, he was blown off his feet and into a wall. Pulsing, crackling sparks crawled all over everything; more than one rack of vials shattered and Alys and the ghoul both were sent to their knees, just from this apparent side effect of the casting.

The madman giggled again.

"That nice boy Derek just brought me this new stone. I wonder--ah!" He yelped as he touched it. "Oh, yes, fire magic! Hot; mustn't touch!"

Alys had to do something while the techmaster was still lost in his wandering thoughts, but what? Physical attacks would just bounce off uselessly, and a technique would probably take them all out together since this was ground zero for the testing. They'd probably already set off another wave of earthquakes in Valhalla just from the two Nei techs already used in the battle. Rune was down, so spells were out.

_No, wait, remember--airslash!_ Rune had said that would work too, like his spells did. Only Galf was worse off than the Esper. There wasn't time to use a monomate on either one...

Alys grabbed her second slasher and popped the blades open.

"That won't work, little girl. Didn't you pay attention the first time?" the lunatic asked, genuine curiosity in his voice.

_How did this work? Pull in power, but not from outside me..._ Her gut flip-flopped and she wobbled as dizziness washed through her as she tried to comply. It was absurd; she was barely competent with one technique! She was no Esper; she didn't understand how this sort of thing worked!

Sometimes, though, will (or sheer, bullheaded stubbornness) was enough when skill and training were lacking. Alys grabbed that dizziness and nausea with her mind, shoved it into her slasher, and flung the throwing blade. Instead of following its usual arc, it skimmed along the surface of the ground until it reached the techmaster's feet. Then, the slasher burst into crackling orange light and erupted upwards, spinning around and around the madman like corkscrew in reverse until it reached his head, then snapped off its pattern and sailed back to Alys's hand.

Shaking, she dropped to her knees and retched. Shivers rocked her body; her hands were numb and she couldn't seem to make her fingers work. The slasher clanked off the cave floor as she dropped. _Pull it together, Alys!_ she thought desperately, trying to regain her senses. _There's still the zombie!_

Her head swam, and the edges of her vision began to blur. Even turning her head to see where the walking corpse was, if it was attacking her, was too much. _And what about the techmaster?_ Was he alive? Dead? Conscious or unconscious? _Damn_ it! She couldn't see, couldn't move. She had to _get up_.

But she couldn't.

Her vision narrowed to a blurry pinpoint.

Then, darkness claimed her.


	13. Chapter 13

"Is she all right?" a deep voice asked anxiously. After a few moments, she was able to place it.

"Galf?" she asked weakly.

"I'm here, Alys."

_Alys. Oh, yeah. That's me._

"She'll be fine," said someone else. This voice was smooth as silk., a gentle purr, but something wasn't right about the gentleness, the comforting tones. "I'd say she just had a bad case of spell-shock." What was wrong? Maybe opening her eyes would help. She gave it a try. Her eyelids fluttered, but didn't quite make it open.

"What the blazes is that?" Galf demanded angrily. Scared angry.

"It happens to novice Espers sometimes, or even to masters if pushed too hard by carelessness or need. It's what happens if you try to draw upon power that you haven't got, when your reserves are tapped out but you cast a spell anyway."

She tried to open her eyes again. This time they worked. She could see the concerned face of the blue-haired man; he knelt by her side, supporting her head and shoulders.

"Rune?" she murmured, her speech somewhat slurred. Her tongue felt thick and the taste of bile was strong in her mouth. The sight of the Esper's face made her realize what had been wrong with his voice. "Why'ya bein' so nice?" she managed to say.

Rune's beautiful face curved into a scowl. Behind him, Galf burst out laughing.

"You saved all our necks, girl. Even a guy like Rune has got the sensitivity to appreciate that."

"Oh. We got'm?"

"You got him. Rune's spell hurt him, but whatever you did finished the job."

The fog was slowly starting to clear from Alys's mind as she worked herself back towards consciousness.

"What about the ghoul?" she asked. She had to enunciate each word carefully but managed to speak clearly this time.

"Apparently it wasn't a real ghoul," Rune explained. "When we came to, it was just standing there. Without orders from its master, it couldn't take any action. Galf and I made sure it wouldn't react; burning to ash is always a good antidote for animated corpses."

"That's good."

"What did you do to him, anyway?" Galf asked.

"I tried something like an airslash. It turned my slasher into a kind of spinning blade vortex instead. I suppose I ought to be thankful it did anything at all."

"Those weapon-magics tend to be very art-specific," Rune said. "Trying to apply a sword skill to a slasher...I'm not surprised that you passed out. You're lucky you weren't killed."

"Particularly, I'd think, since she never learned the airslash skill," Galf put in. Rune's face became an astonished mask.

"What. You've never done a weapon skill before?"

"Um...no...well, now I have..."

"So you just created a new one out of thin air, without training, without practice, and launched it in a combat situation?"

"It was either that or use a Foi and maybe bring the roof down on us."

Rune shook his head.

"I'm amazed you made it work. It takes training and practice for an Esper to learn how to call the power within them, let alone a normal person without an Esper's potential. That you succeeded is astonishing, and that you lived through the experience..." He shook his head again, clearly bewildered. "You must have incredible willpower."

Galf smiled warmly.

"That she does."

"Yay, me. Could someone help me up? This floor is getting less and less comfortable by the minute." Accepting compliments wasn't one of her comfort zones, either.

Galf offered her a big hand; Alys grabbed it and he pulled her to her feet. She wobbled a moment, then caught her balance.

"So, what now?" she asked. "Are we done? Is the world saved and all that?"

"Yes, I'd say so. There's nothing we can do for this region, but with the Nei techniques stopped the effect isn't going to spread further. I suspect it will repair itself if we give it enough time," Rune added. "Enormous natural forces are rarely overcome by short-term human activity. It's only that eons of history are one eyeblink in the planet's lifespan that make us think otherwise."

"Well, that and the occasional exploding planet."

"A point, Galf," Rune admitted, "but we hardly have that level of technology now."

"I'll have the Guild put out the word about the unstable techniques in this area," Galf said. "I'm sure it'll get around anyway, once the Valhallans pack up and leave, but there's a difference when it comes from a reliable source. That should cut down on future accidents."

Rune nodded, then went over to the dead man.

_The dead man._

The first man Alys had killed. Well, there were the alley thugs, but that hadn't been intentional, or even really her fault, just an accidental chain reaction. This was different. She'd wanted him dead, she'd taken desperate action, and now there he was, a corpse. Wasn't she supposed to feel something? Deep moral shock as her feelings fought it out in her subconscious mind? Was it somehow easier because it had been to save Galf and Rune's lives? Or was she just still in shock and the weight of it was going to come crashing down on her later, probably worse than if she was facing it now?

Heck with it. She'd deal with the problem if it came up. Bad person dead, good people she liked (well, "tolerated," in Rune's case) alive. Insane world-threatening scheme stopped. Innocent lives saved. Not much to agonize over, if she thought of it that way.

Rune unhooked the thick zirconium-lined collar holding the three Cormar Stones from the man's neck.

"These aren't exactly safe as they are, either; I'll have to discharge them to prevent accidents."

"What are they for, anyway?"

"The Nei techniques apparently take more power than a human tech-user can absorb from the environment in a few moments. These crystals act like power batteries--don't give me that blank look; it means storage unit--to tap so combat techniques like Neizonde could be cast rapidly instead of taking extra seconds or minutes to use. You already figured out the rest about them."

"Could you reverse the process? Put the power back into the item the stone sucked dry?"

"Drain the stone by re-energizing the items? Possibly, depending on what effect the draining process had on the original items. If it's only a matter of refilling lost energy into the item, then yes, it would be quite possible. If the draining warped or destroyed the underlying spells that allowed the item to store energy, then no. There is a reason why items of power don't grow on trees."

"We know they don't. That's why there's five thousand meseta in it for us if you can fix our client's Fire Staff," Galf explained.

"I should have known it would be about money."

"I should have known your good mood couldn't last," Alys remarked.

"Let's just go pick up Derek and get going," Galf quickly intervened before things got out of hand. "Oh, yeah, and destroy all this crap. Sands, I don't want someone else finding the dead guy's notes and starting over."

"In that case, may I offer you a lift back to Zema?" Rune suggested.

"Oh?"

"Bring Derek in here. The aftereffects of me using Ryuka to take us away should bring the roof down, unless I'm very much mistaken--which I'm not."

"Burying the man along with his life's work forever. He'd probably want it that way. I wonder, though..."

"Yes?"

"Do you realize that we don't even know the tech-user's name?"

Alys shrugged.

"Who cares, Galf? A thousand years from now, no one would have remembered it anyway...Damn it, Rune, what do you think is so funny?"

_Fin._

_AUTHOR'S NOTE:_ _This one is special to me. As it happens, the storyline of "Techniques of Chaos" was the very first idea for a Phantasy Star fanfic that I ever thought up. I mean, it's kind of obvious..."How Alys Met Rune" and all of that. I thought it up way back in 1995, about a year or so after I first played PS4, and long before I'd even encountered the PS online fan community. I'd gotten through about half of it, then got stuck and set it aside..._

_Somehow, in the interim, I finished, and published online in various locations, 116 other Phantasy Star fanfics, twenty-five of which feature Alys, to say nothing of those in other genres. Meanwhile, I read the translation of the Phantasy Star Compendium and realized that, oddly, my original story concept for "ToC" wasn't that far off what we knew. There was Alys as a trainee hunter, working under an experienced master. All I had to do was back a few years off her age and change the master's name to Galf, and there I was...The next thing I knew, I was rewriting chapters, introducing the character of the thief (I love the scenes of Galf and Alys chewing out Derek over "honor among thieves"--thiefly professional honor is nearly as silly as some of the samurai/knightly ethos, IMHO), fleshing out Every (bonus points if you noticed he was named after Henry Every, the pirate who taught Bartholomew "Black Bart" Roberts in real life), and working my way through the story. Joel Fagin helped me pre-read everything, which helped me, among other things, flesh out the darts game._

_And now I've come full circle, finishing off my original idea after eleven years. So thanks to all of you who've followed me all the way through the end!_


End file.
